Elephant Parade Down SF

I found you; you needed to pee. 
You held my hand in a sky-facing palm
like it weighed more than a bucket of rain
and I told you, “you should probably go pee.”

The elephants paraded in a moment with wind
where your cheeks lifted and let your hair
sculpt the under of your apples,
and I fell deep into a love with you.

A fracturing shaken kind of footing that warmed,
breathed with the breath of you,
tilted me into your collarbone
and I told you, “to trust

that this is a forever kind of thing,
with sprinkles on top, is to be mad
with greek mythology and take real
meaning with the words ‘immortal’ and ‘mortal.’”


So I watched the best minds of your generation tumbling,
In cool blue seats, lugging from here ‘till there.
With peach and iced and mint in lungs
Who clear the fog over my eyes in their warm wide walking feet.
A woman struggles down my arm
joyfully hunched to the weight of her baby boy,
Her mother, close behind, hunches to the weight of her grown girl. 
Your heels conform to my rigid shoulder.
In streets, I cup the people who don’t want to steal
In hills, I cup the people who don’t have to steal
And still in rest, in gravity, we bump along down Geary.
I let you pass your brother in silence,
I kiss your knees in childhood,
I’ve got gum stuck in my armpits, I smell like an old man
Chortling on the 5 due to your exclamation of the word chortling. 
and there are 9th-grade girls who have been sober for 2 years. There are 9th-grade girls who relapse in the bathrooms, test positive for xylazine, and are huffing again on the same day. 

And still, you breathe me in, and pretend my scent is cold and youthful and fresh.

— Zosia Mosur