1. The wedding of an old flame

I wore a new dress to the reception
the colour of brake lights and lips
blotted on cigarettes and champagne glass rims.
We left early and couldn't find a cab.
February in New York, the frozen air
trimmed with wind, the prick
of rain into skin, my fifteen-denier legs
under the new umbrella.
White triangles that unfolded
like a heron above us.

2. First day on the job

On the day we met, we got caught: a sudden
drench as we smoked on the stoop after closing.
We dashed around the block to a cafe.
You held your umbrella with one hand
and slid your other arm around me.
I sat with you for an hour, my dress shrinking as it dried.
When you kissed me a week later it seemed inevitable.

3. Requiem for the three dollar umbrella

I walk across Cooper Square alone, the drains
clogged with wet paper flickering orange
under streetlights. The rising steam
gives the sense of autumn moors, storm petrels
with bent silver wings and ruptured shanks.
I once saw a bird that had managed to die completely
perpendicular to the ground, wings almost spread.
Its face half smashed, half buried
like a pub dart. Here the remains are accidental
casualties of wind and cheap construction
featherless deaths swept up in the night.

4. When you visited Austin

We went to a cafe downtown.
By then it was too late, sweating into
our third summer, our bodies separated
like hot mayonnaise. We sat in silence, watching
the Friday night carnival pass in the street.
Girls in sticky jeans made chains of cartwheel smoke.
The next day, after you left, I remembered the umbrella
propped up at the Ruta Maya coffee house
but when I went back, it was gone.