catch-up, listening to citizen cope

in ten years a girl will lend you
this cd and make you promise
to return it.

you will pad barefoot
down the hall of a third avenue apartment
to use someone else's washroom,

prop open the window with a beer bottle
and light candles for the buddha
drawn on the door.

the bed is a pirate ship and the girl
it belongs to is curled around you 
in the third-floor third avenue heat

and sweating salt. when you crawl
back into the wave of sleep,

her shoulders twitch, parrot-wings
over you.

i learned these lyrics on my bedroom
floor at ten to murmur them now,
return them.