the city and annelyse

one more turn and it's the Mission District. i'm taking pictures of strangers. these are my people, and this is what they look like when they're caught living on camera: taqueria green and the late afternoon light reflected in her thin brown hair; troublemakers on the corner watching troublemakers down the block by the market; two twisted lovers intertwined in black and white jackets, lips touching lips that have touched lips that have touched skin that has touched someone famous (before he was famous); Annelyse, buying a lime because it's three for a dollar and she has thirty three cents, and there's poetry to be talked out down the street in an unlocked playground between the crumbs of my one-dollar cookie; Annelyse, cast in the leftover windstorm that we brought to keep the words we spoke in morse-code in-jokes and Bright Eyes quotes; Annelyse, at the BART station, and Stephen Malkmus is still ringing in our ears, and she is still ringing in my fingers (it's just been minutes since she took me by the hand through the exit of the theatre as if we were lovers from the same set of suburbs, not poets from different states not the kids from summer camp and summer camp and summer camp that we are); and my night trails off as my train gets going and she waves goodbye to me and I can wave back I can wave I can wave back all I want but if I take pictures, I have proof. I have a lot of proof.