VICTORIA LYNNE MCCOY

He Visits Your City Briefly

Maybe I can't find the beginning because we exist
perpetually in the story's end: the island splayed out
below us, a dark sinking where Central Park should be.
Where it will sprout again green come morning.
Light moves in the dark toward the dark. Tomorrow, a new
dark sinking where he should be. I'll keep every postcard—
Terracotta armies moving through me, Sydney erecting
its skyline daily in my veins, the thousand-year-old women
in a province he won't be able to name, their faces painted
serene, accepting. It's easier to blame geography than to forgive
myself, so tonight I will take them all into me, every street
that goes on being a street in the wake of his leaving.
Hello, ghost town of my hand without his.