To D.B.
by Edward Hirsch

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I miss your apartment on West Eleventh Street 
where I slept off the front hall in a bedroom
that would have been a closet in another city.
 
The plants breathed easily in their heavy pots, 
but the radiators knocked all night, like ghosts 
trying to reach us from the other side.
 
The traffic on Sixth Avenue was a slow buzz. 
Someone rattled a dog chain in the moonlight 
that bathed the schoolyard across the street.
 
Light seeped in through the barred windows. 
I could hear Faith rustling around downstairs, 
getting ready for work, unwilling to die.
 
If there is a West Village in the other world, 
we will someday meet there. I’ll reach over 
and hug you, which will make you uneasy.
 
Let’s go for a bottle of wine at the tavern 
near the branch library and then stroll over 
to Citarella for prosciutto and melon.
 
You can buy a pack of cigarettes at the corner 
and explain the architecture to me. Maybe
I can stay at your place until I get settled.

"To D.B." by Edward Hirsch, from SPECIAL ORDERS by Edward Hirsch, copyright © 2008 Edward Hirsch. Used by permission of Penguin Books.