the pretty people are still alive: the girls in white
blouses, the boys being kissed
from train-windows.
I was alive in aftershock:
I had sex with ghosts and wrote
love letters to the gods,
to the dust motes in my hair.
I was waiting for a boy with too pale skin
and black eyes
to pull me apart, to uncord the length of his heat
into my small, shaking hands; I was waiting
for the aesthetic to unspool into my bed,
the wet parts all sudden and alive.
the dead soldiers, their lovers:
they are laughing at me. I am
romanticizing, I am crouched
naked under damp sheets,
waiting and waiting alone.
the last pavilion 