it was night & we were always drunk
              or it was day (gray day) & I’d buy
                         boxes of clementines on my way
              from school & keep them outside
my window on the sill so they’d stay
              cool—O Edinburgh, where we’d
                         mash ourselves together on that shelf
              of bed after you lined up shoes
to toss, one by one, at the heater
              on the wall—open coils that glowed
                         orange for 15-minute increments
              like a toaster, & when you’d hit
the button your shoes would thud
              like large fish tails slapping the sides
                         of a boat & we rose with the wind’s
              current, its november brogue, &
O Edinburgh, it spoke in tongues,
              flapped doors open & shut, howled
                         until I couldn’t remember exactly
              what happened in the dark except
that we curled ourselves up into
              the smallest specks until I wept
                         over a horoscope & someone else’s
              tattoo & I never loved you because
I was a wall of a city I had never been to