Just the rain clouds remember how to move 
in this city of rotting bird nests and unfinished bottles
	
where you and I are the only living things.
Most mornings I watch them alone 

at the window as they float over streets 
of emptied taxicabs. You spend whole days asleep. 

You say you dream of geraniums and mosquitoes, 
my grandmother, the boy who delivered the daily paper. 

We are no longer enough for each other. 

Our words, too, are becoming incomplete; we are afraid 
one of us will finally voice the question.

But haven't we been asking it for generations—
demanding explanation for famine, shattered heirlooms, 
children silenced by ocean floors?

And still, for centuries we have been surprised 
by sudden deafness, bread knives slipping into thumbs.