What we mean when we say things happen for reasons that are not really very clear to us at the time

Montpellier, July 31, 2008

Sweat-hot Monday,
sitting back-flat
against a crooked church
in Montpellier.

The day stinks of last night's piss and beer.

Whether here or five
floors up in a hot room, my body
will sink; deflate like a balloon
in this heat. Indifference
drifts by on the scent of Turkish meat,
turning on a spit on the corner.

I fan myself with an empty envelope.
I do not let myself endure enough.

The day is a 5pm panini on
a vending cart in Rome.
The chocolate in my room
won't stay hard,
it melts in my hand.

A woman sits down next to me
with frizzy hair, seeds in her teeth,

Francais? She asks. I shake my head,
Espanol? I shrug,
Deutsche? She crinkles her nose,
Anglais! Oh! Anglais! She seems satisfied.

She shakes her head, thinking.
I offer her a cigarette, some candy
from a little bag.

The woman slips a keychain into
my hand and speaks loudly in French
words I don't understand:
Occitan! Occitan! she repeats,
I ask her to write it on a page
in a book. Occitania;

She draws a map
This is where you are:
Occitania.

*
The afternoon is far from
the night in wet spring
when I pushed his body off me,

felt it slide down my stomach,
my legs, like oil on a pan
and into the opening
eyelid of the door to morning.

Fat jack rabbits on the lawns
the size of wolves. Twisted vines
leaning in through the open window,
bobbing in the early air, not yet having
to bear the weight of pregnant fruit.
*

The woman taps the map of Occitania:
Espana, she shakes her head
Italie, she shakes her head
Occi-tann-ie, she points to the keychain
she slipped in my hand, a red circle with a yellow cross,
and taps the map.

Entiendo, I reply- a lie,
and look it up online later.

*
Drifting back to that night
in hot spring, my nostrils fill with
gin, rising from the night-before's mess
on the sticky floor. The cranberry juice
it mixed with staining the wood
edges of furniture. Later,

I hid all evidence in the garbage
under tissue.
*

Snap back, back-flat, still.

Montpellier is larkish:
restaurant tables held
up by plastic crates and
bicycle parts.

The day stretches further
and sags. I peel the shirt
from my back, smile
at the woman as she leaves,
and remember the last time
I really
let myself

go.