Your Long Hands I’m Sure Are In Your Coat

Davy Knittle

as though I have what to do
my mind is the fragrance of a can

it held tomato salad 
my hand is in the shape of yours 

I too brought impressions of dinner
home from her home

you like to ask me how they seemed 
I like it when you ask

and we talk about it
it’s the bridge into being just a pair again 

their dining room is dark pink 
and so pinkens to me as we eat 

and gets its pink in things
I remember white whipped cream as rose 

I meant to wish leaving their house
our air

my first open end
since the start of dinner

sometimes a house is too much a house
for me a light is in the shape of your eye

it’s on a car beaming its heads
cops pulled up to stop a party noise  

walking home it’s too cold
to hold hands 

when I’m just me and meet sleep
its pink is an early sky of half-uncles 

and your mother’s cousins 
and the childhood friends of my mom 

she and one of them hover in ice skates 
she kicked through drywall to get 

or she was kicked or kicked with the skates on 
I have an impression that’s my mom 

animated from a picture where she’s four
crying on dog-grey cement her dad made

in the basement of the house
he built around them for buyers 

she wanted the ice skates
because they lived in a basement 

she wants me to come home this year 
because I’m with you

and she can be the third again 
and so the first 

except you and I fill rooms 
that need us more 

with a river of cornered air 
like we open a hole and beam it from space 

between people who trust a conduit 
firm as the other’s breath