I stand by a water cooler. Its upside-down
despondency and crock match the purity
of my melancholy. Think of Akhmatova’s white
stone in the well. That morning you were
dispassionate about Raskolnikov and Pecola,
and pointed to our fingers and their chain of bones
pulling into a trainyard of subway stops. Evidence
of the end of freight, you said. It was pre-spring.
The sadness of melting snow hit me like a film thrown
suddenly in daylight. So, torture the gods.