Que idiota! Didn’t you notice before you moved?
Inez clucked—she’d never seen the like, not even here
in Mexico City, where whole neighborhoods are patched
together with silly putty and cardboard cutouts of TV stars.
So you’ll learn to garden indoors, she decided. Well,
at least the electricity works, and the bugs aren’t bad,
and on clear nights, the impossible sky is stretched out
for my own private enjoyment, right above my bed,
a postage stamp of cosmic pin-pricks that has become
so familiar it makes my body feel like a proxy
deposited nightly between cinderblock walls
while visions of eternity unravel above.
We’ll spend hours in bed watching bellies of jets
glide by, always a little ahead of their engine’s roar.
Inez helps me count the seconds in between, and
when it rains, I move the bed and try not to
walk between the kitchen and the living room
or even go to the bathroom, but I’ve taken to
wearing flip flops and splashing through anyway.