Forecast

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by Austin Davis

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The image of you tonight stepping out of the shower

with a towel around your hair

 

will be the screensaver in my brain

until the day they cut me open for science.

 

I’m halfway out the window, lighting a cigarette.

 

You smile at me from the doorway

and finger a mountain range with a wavy stream,

puffy clouds, and a grinning sun

 

on the steamed up mirror as if you’re hoping

that if you just keep drawing, it’ll thicken into a window.

 

Your footprints on the bathroom floor

look like little turtles crawling back to the ocean

 

and in this moment, I want to fall

from our apartment on the fifth story a little less.

 

Let’s make love on the wet tile,

tonguing up and down each other’s bodies

 

until we both believe that the sun will never rise or set.

 

I had a dream that daybreak is just a camera flash

and the color of our day prints across the sky

all inky and soft in the evening.

 

I don’t know the difference between what is real

and what I’m most afraid of,

 

but you’ve blown out the candle on our bedside table

and are crawling into bed smelling like coconut soap

and the promise of a warm tomorrow,

 

so I know I can smile for the photographer,

even if he is God.

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Austin Davis is a poet and student activist currently studying creative writing at ASU and leading Arizona Jews For Justice’s unsheltered outreach program, AZ Hugs For the Houseless. Austin is the author of The World Isn’t the Size of Our Neighborhood Anymore (Weasel Press, 2020) and Celestial Night Light (Ghost City Press, 2020). You can find Austin on Twitter @Austin_Davis17, on Instagram @austinwdavis1 and at his website at https://msha.ke/austindavis.

 

 

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