Vacant

By the back lot of Spalding’s bakery on West 6th
I reached my fingers around the rusted gate
of used-to-be farmland dropped out-of-the-sky
sideways into inner-city and curled my hand
around a pale blue blossom, took the petals
between the printed pads of index and thumb.

You drew plans for empty spaces on your notepad.

I kicked the broken bottles at my feet,
asked you to hold my notebook but,
stuck my pen through the thick
of my ponytail and clambered
over the red gate, dropped
into a patch of could-be-poison-oak.

I wrote the names of fauna on my hands,
pressed my palms to the bricks of the bakery,
touched my cheek to the panes of the windows,
scribbled the taste of the dust on my forearm.

You pressed yourself against the metal until
the flakes of red-40 paint stuck to the white lettering
of your t-shirt, while I turned over rock and abandoned
lawn chair, counting daddy-long-legs and the circles
of a spider’s web, drawing further away.

I told you writing was about discovering empty.