On the day we meet let’s tell the bartender that we’re freshly divorced

On the day we meet let’s tell the bartender that we’re freshly divorced. by Julia Rapp That we threw our rings in the Hudson River a moment ago.To celebrate, let’s drink alcohol that is the color of indoor pools.Tell me your last words. I will share the ways I have pierced myself.Let’s touch each other in a corner booth. Smash our bottles in the back alley.Enter a street where the people are fleas and the city is a wounded deer.It could have been our two-year anniversary, but I have been dead for years.We could start here, on a building that looks like a glass hive, and leap.No? Okay, let’s eat disappointing sushi on the hotel floor and keep talking.You want to live in a shade of purple that rolls along like a story without a plot.I want to live in a house made entirely of citrus, but San Francisco will do.Do I seem careless and radiant to you? I am trying to be a plot device.You tell me to stop kissing you like we’re married and I have just learnedthat you are dying. But darling, we are dying. So I must tell youthat I have lied— I do believe in that which endures. I (almost) do. Poetry Home Art by Mark Yale Harris