All streets are covered with leaves. And a friend wonders: "why don't we fall head over heels these days?"

That the heart is an unknowable city in rain, or that it is an organ of fire has already been spoken by others.

I call it a breathing stone, black with blood, striated with memory, a kind of lapsed coin, the only fortune I have to give and be given back.

Here. Hold it now, in your warm palm. Give it time, give it your gaze, and if you can, company of your own.

It will open, if you can believe that cities reveal their labyrinths to sunlight, fires eventually cast themselves into skylights, and stones also blossom.

Even though I am less like dew on morning windows and even though my hands are usually cold

I lay down, sideways, like a muddy bank, my arms suspended like bridges over your liquid breathing

in this narrow couch, my whole length touching yours, listening as a tree's reflection does with all its waving leaves

to this riverine language.