vii.

i read a study in some magazine or news
paper about people living in
basement apartments.

i think the study was limited to those in
queens or harlem but

in your basement apartment
there is no light coming in to burn
the irises. to complete
our equations, all blue & needy
at the foot of the bed,
perpetual mid-
night.

how close to the groundwater we became.

you are both queens & harlem, water-
logged or on
                    fire. Troy, even.

in the study the people
adapted, as people tend to do.
they fucked. they birthed.
they developed webbing between toes.
it’s true. i read it some
where.

i bring it up to perhaps exonerate you,
to expel you from the
concrete confines of our love—

the basement where i plundered you—

or else to prove you
Amphibian. as if that were enough
to allow both of us
to leave,

to walk up
stairs     ascend