A fake waterfall is my favorite terrain feature

in this cut,

in this old pastry wrapped in walking,

here.

I watch the river subsided to half its depth

from below the plane trees,

next to the housing development,

where, just to be dangerous,

I walk on the bike path,

and laughing, waving tourists walk toward me,

toward downtown, one of them yells

that he’s never been to this city,

what should he see,

I eat an ice cream,

watching them,

and that’s when,

yes, for me it’s still

that fake,

weirdly constructed,

cheap waterfall,

smelling of chlorine and mold,

that I first saw

when I was thirteen,

and I was convinced

that it was simply the most beautiful

thing in the world,

because the sound of it was real,

that’s my favorite place here,

because back then I still knew

what was the most beautiful in the world.

Smelling of chlorine and mold. Chalky.

But then the days passed,

the synchronized, rhythmically blinking windows,

where you could see from outside

they were all watching the same thing,

and our nights dipped us upside down

into what though

and still.

All we know today

is that the dog walkers’ laughter

dies down around midnight.

And by then

I only like fake things,

because real things exhaust me

with their realness,

drain me, crush me,

rafts and tugboats,

bricks, embankment,

lemon juice,

short and long realities,

everything will be too much,

and I don’t have the tools to curb reality.

They turned off that waterfall years ago,

that much is clear.

It’s only beautiful from this vantage point now.

Like the seasons’ congestion,

the deposited uncertainty in the crust,

and the cat in the window across the street,

as it talks intently to the crows.

Outside

the wind fumbles

with the remaining afternoon

hung up among the reaching twigs,

around now

the smell of rain is not bothered either

that perhaps I’ve never been inside this poem,

this poem, in which

here, at this point,

someone sleeps here, like something turned off,

perhaps smelling of chlorine,

perhaps in a striped sweater,

and just now,

past the plane trees,

beside the concrete-block apartment,

just with the sound heard in a dream,

something flies up