secret escape hatch on the back of an old photograph

too much factory district, too much winter bus stop
	too much rent and paper-thin paycheck
too many scrap metal scars
too much heart in my chest pinching lungs in half
too much gray landscape on the surface of my eyes
	too many holes in my jeans
too much is too much and she comes to me
	like something out of a jukebox 
	a renaissance
and i wash away in headsong

her arms
are long
like rope, so i climb up to her atmosphere, copacetic blue
        a million cartoon parachutes
her face 
is calm
always april, shelter from angry storms, and i fall asleep on her cheek
her heart
feels solved
like a vase, open ended vessel
	woman shaped wishing well
her thoughts
are time machines, rosary beads, wind hitting a wind chime
with accidental pleasure
and she says to me
if the world is an actor then the actor is a villain and the strings 
of this machine need oil and ambition and the stage is a mirror 
for the hero in our heads complicated symbols flashlights for weapons 
trick coins and sharp pencils, if the world is an actor
	then the actor is a villain 

she says
go deep
if it soothes
smooths
sink to the bottom of real
	unaware
one eye flashing hazard lights, one eye filled with shadow fish
	exhale and evolve
love will remember your name, skip stones across the water
	trails to lead you back home

somewhere
pastries fall off the back of a bakery truck
	and the ravens dive in
somewhere, a mangy black dog enjoys a brown leather shoe
somewhere, a cross-eyed comet makes lopsided circles
	around a dizzy star
somewhere, a photograph unfolds
	faded
fingers tracing the silver shapes
hitting strings until a symphony explodes
loader than a bus driver’s battle cry:

hey
you getting on or what?