Searing afternoon light: I flow

through the entrails of the city.

A weight settles behind my throat.

I try to remember my voice and

wonder what drowning

without a sea feels like.

I move through a century:

It is August. It rains unforgivingly.

Water circles my knees.

Someone plunges into the sea.

It is an ungodly hour.

A godless city.

A van narrowly escapes me.

A crowd carries me in.

The placid screen bars the cacophony.

A funeral voice announces the next stop.

The light wedges the hour.

Dust dances

on the quiet windowsill.

A vacant seat is a sign of fortune.

I sit to scrawl notes on the back of

a withering one-way ticket,

waiting to hear an epiphany

escape through a crevice

in the falling water.

A hundred-year old apparition floats

by—sidestepping on the roof

overgrown with lonely weeds,

pressing against the greying

1891 convent walls—dressed

in nun-white, running after

a child on a disappearing wind.

Darkness descends and drapes

the city. I move listlessly

down the aisle

and see my shadow

disappear with a stranger’s light.