Cotacachi

She carried pretty for awhile. And let it go with her upturned mouth, the second thing I noticed as we traveled on the train. This woman next to me. She tells me at one of her birthday dinners, she left the room, could not receive that flush of “I reach for you,” until she was in the dark. I looked under the armpit of sex, to see brined opera. I’m riding in the train with her, and she is quiet, then a flourish of words, then her lips flirt with the words. I look for dirt underneath the nails, there is none. “I’m afraid of love,” she tells me, and I don’t believe her. It’s underneath the voice standing as wetland. It’s underneath her asking me how I hold my pencil. Direct. I like to see her pour the words. And I wonder if her lover presses his thumb into the tiny hole of her one ear.

I can’t see the other for the slant of her head. Presses against the singular mole on her neck? A few seconds, there is nothing as intense and near, as achingly warm as the eyebrows. Something brown in a lake—the first thing I noticed.

Soon I’ve lost it in the undetermined volcano of the eyes. But hemorrhage of lake. Cotacachi. I see her, and she recognizes me.