& what is a city but a mouth
Paris, or maybe just the echo of it—
twilight unzipping over glass,
Scarlatti slipping into the air like a match blown out,
each note a gold thread burning & gone.
Love arrives like this—
without asking, without hands,
a fever crawling the spine of a city
until you mistake it for your own.
Then Praha, or whatever name will have me.
Streets pink with the last spill of sun,
music unraveling from an unseen room—
a ghost humming itself whole.
Some places do not ask you to stay.
They enter the body & lock the door.
Inside me, the night breathes.
And I—
I am still here.