The parade of beautiful
boys and women

have long since gone.
Along with the letters

and packets
of photographs.

Yesterday
G. read my cards:

tarot, through the white, pink
static of the television set.

Child, he said,
you are a bone.

You must leave
everything,

burn it all down
to the ground.

In the Polish black and white film
I sit inside the parked white sedan,

disguised as a boy
in oversized black

slacks, white tank, and pale pink
satin bomber jacket.

My hair is bleached
and cropped.

My hands are tied
behind my back.

I am moving
my lips
as if
in whisper.

As the camera moves nearer
I murmur

though barely, I may be
disappearing.

I am devouring
small chocolates wrapped in bright plastic.

Parked outside the high-rise
apartment

of the Warsaw
housing project.

(Inside, teenage-children smoke
and carry over-sized stuffed animals. )

There is nothing
I would not do.

Everything
I once knew,

is gone.

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