*A return to the place where my friends broke a thousand beer bottles*

I sat on the broken glass in Shattered Grove,
by the abandoned red bicycle, thinking
of the empty labyrinthine building
I would have to walk through to find
the picnic table on the other side.

Manhattan was large
over the river, sighing under
the sun’s searchlight rays.

A wooden tube bobbed vertically
in the water and was attached
to the mouth of a limp old man
floating slowly under the surface.

His breath came in waves
and reminded me of the languid turning
of a high school history book’s pages.

I think he even winked at me.

And I thought about how many people
we had loved and how we can never
get closer to them than we are to ourselves.

It would be physically impossible.