All day long the dark part of our city is lightening at the same time as the light part of our city is darkening—the walls are creamy and lumpy, like tapioca, and every door is a double door, as in a restaurant, swinging one way then swinging back like the kind of interpretation that depends on what you think: we’re not even sure where we’ve been. There are chairs in the middle of the sidewalk where you don’t usually find furniture—when you sit down you don’t even know what you need to get up for, is it time? All day long the lights are bright then go out altogether, and we look at each other the way you look at something in the lost and found, something that belongs to you if you can only find it. It’s true, we often mix up the fight and flight signals, covering our teeth and uncovering our thighs, swerving or veering unnecessarily, turning to the side or turning around—everybody says you need to remember where you haven’t been. Narrow homes appear on wide streets and wide homes on narrow streets, like a kind of mirroring—it’s dark where it is light, as if there’s a dark source inside a light source we don’t even know where we are when we’re right here! People ask you where you’ve been when they don’t even know where they’ve been! Of course, it is easier when everybody is close together, walking around together, checking on each other or holding onto each other, like a microphone that picks up everything, I’m not even sure what this is an example of.
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Peter Leight lives in Amherst, MA. He has previously published poems in Paris Review, AGNI, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, New World, Tupelo Quarterly, and other magazines.