Looking to You (Wallet)
My wallet breaks while I am in the San Francisco Airport
in line to buy a PB&J that won’t disappoint
because it is the cheapest thing
And I was a fool not to pack one
Zipped shut,
I pull.
The zipper clatters to the floor
ringing out a sound only fairies can hear,
signaling my buying power is dismembered.
I step out of line
to maim my wallet
to reclaim a functional day.
The wallet that you gave me.
To pry open its locked jaw,
is made more difficult by softness..
Almost a neoprene, the two eyes side by side
belonging to two women who might have
stepped from the frames of a Fellini fantasy.
Pressed cheek to cheek,
these two faces in excerpt
could never be realistically rendered
as a parallel between you and I.
But still I find us there,
one looking to the other,
the other looking ahead,
as I have unzipped it
at the dollar store
or a dinner with friends
that makes me feel
the best parts of life
will never change
even though I rarely carry
quarters, nickels, or dimes.
Of the women on the wallet
the one looking straight ahead
has a black liquid liner on the upper lid.
You’d always arrive with it applied,
perhaps touching it up in the mirror by
the only exit in the whole office
that we could confirm went anywhere.
They are both young forever
softer than they look.
That’s us, I’d say,
crying for all the others
and rolling our eyes for ourselves.
The proudest days
included you entering with softness,
finding I was already clattering away.
Seeing that I could sustain,
my greatest gift.
Showing up.
I might shift to side eye, but I’d never fully see you
in the stagnant florescents
even turning in full
to greet you as you arrived from your many lives
into another uncountable day
among the supplies
in the windowless basement office.
There’s never been more than 50 dollars in this wallet.
only ever petty cash to most,
but to us
an everlasting among of
overripe Chinatown fruit.
I try so hard to think of reasons
not to throw it away.
A commemorative for deep looking, for watching,
like no one could steal a wallet with eyes on it.
I could use it as a decoy,
But I’d con myself in that surely,
grab it on the way out the door
only to remember the
endless compliments on a wallet purchased
with little thought and endless care.
The only time to autopilot,
you just see something
and you know
it is supposed to go
to them, that friend.
It is your duty to get it there.
