I Phone You From the Sumo

I had a seat close enough to see the buttocks

of the largest wrestler wearing a blue mawashi

and the waterfall of flab all down his body

and it must have been right as he craned his

leg with the ease of a ballerina to ear-height

that I felt alone in a stadium of five hundred

in a city of forty million.

I watched

as time froze, as the scattered salt floated

above the dohyou, as one by one the spectators

blinked into nothingness and the streets emptied

until I was the only girl in Tokyo. On the line,

an echo meant that we talked over each other,

the freshness of our relationship palpable

in those awkward, tentative questions. How are you?

What’s the weather like? Does anyone speak English?

I had no idea that six months from then

we’d conceive a child, that we’d already be married

and the whole fragile dust matter of love

would grow bones, teeth, a pulse, an opinion.

Neither distraction nor distance nor curiosity filled

your absence. Imperceptibly,

and without any ado, this whole wide world had changed

its orbit to turn around you.