In a culvert by the airport

under crumbling slag

wine colored water seeps

to this pool the two does

drink from: each sipping as

the other keeps look out.

The skyline is a blur

of barcode and microchip.

Even at home we hold

the narrowest purchase.

No arcs of tracer fire.

No caravans of fleeing

families. Only this

suspicion ripples

through our circles of lamp glow

(as you sweep the faint sweat

from your forehead and flip

another page in your novel)

this sense that all we own

is the invisible

web of our words and touches

silence and fabulation

all make believe and real

as the two does out

scavenging through rose hips

and shattered drywall:

their presence in the space

around them liveliest

just before they vanish.