I ate your chocolate on the way home
awaiting canned laughter
only you could make real
by sideways glances.

I am good
at the wrong things,
embarrassed for not knowing
better about happiness.

We are each
other’s inflections.
“I knew I was happy then
but looking back, I wasn’t.”
And you who was,
retort “I never knew.”

If only we could combine these,
lay the graph of future
back down on the past
fill a crater with a mountain.

Try re-pitting a cherry after eating it—
enjoy knowing a happiness
as complex as growing.

But this is New York City,
we’re expected to want
pesticides, hormones,
a way to trope towards sun
underneath an awning.

I would like to tell you
the seed fertilizes, the roots take hold,
the big happiness is worth
the expense of the small—
when you watch the leaves allay
the wind. Cherry trees. Truth.

History insides out
again and you almost open,
again. Your top button
eases—could I slip
fingers in? Cherries unpicked,
remnants of what might
have been. I’ve been
fingering the batter bowl.

Men sing a cappella on the train
someone smells of piss,
blackjack on a cell phone with sound effects
turned on, heavy
collapse into the train
ride home.