Where We’ve Never Been

I want something unfamiliar
is what she told me on the stairwell
in the alley where the young doves built
their nests in rusted railing.
I want to steal her and take her
far away.

To break locks with the back end
of a knife handle and take things
that were never mine would be like ice
cream on a sunny day with nothing
going on.

They tell her she’s a stranger now
for never making time to come around
and there are red rings burned into
the white walls from the raging heat
that plumes behind her forehead.

I am a prisoner in the heart of her,
who walks up to the front stoop,
always crying coming back from there,
and all her hair is everywhere
because the wind is ripping past us
like the hours of the night
soar past the stars.