BEFORE SUNRISE

                    ​by Cameron A. Lawrence 

When the you who isn’t you calls
the me who isn’t me, and says,
Meet me in the East Village,
I’ll walk forty blocks or more,
however far you like through the city.
I’ll wake and dress at any time of night
and meet you beneath the glow
of tall buildings, weaving through
lines of theater patrons, the throngs
in Times Square sending
images of images to distant area codes,
and want the you who isn’t you
to know the me who isn’t me is good
at listening, that my ears are dishes
you could drop your keys into,
my face a coffee table to abandon
your warm shoes beneath, as if
your thoughts have just arrived
home after a long day in the city.
Following dinner, drinks. And after
I don’t speak a word, listening
down the Avenue of the Americas,
only listen and nod over iron grates,
on slats of moonlit park benches,
listening to how the longing makes
even the thought of prayer impossible,
how you entered the cathedral off 97th
and discovered you had lost
the cathedral inside yourself. I say
nothing as we carry on past theaters
now dark, and when finally we stop
outside your door, the you who isn’t you
will say nothing more, will wrap
your arms around the me who isn’t me,
press a cool ear against my ear,
and hear me tell you I love, and tell you
I love—what else, after all, is left
for the me who isn’t me to say?




​

photo by Andrew Thomas Lee

​Cameron Alexander Lawrence's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in West Branch, The Florida Review, Image, TYPO, Forklift Ohio, Tinderbox Poetry Journal,  Whiskey Island, Ruminate, and elsewhere. He lives in Decatur, GA, with his wife and four children.