You phone an invitation

two decades overdue.

I find you already there

in a New York café with something

sealed in cellophane. "For a laugh,"

you say, lighting a cigarette,

but I'm not in the mood.

You spread a faded square

on the counter, I recall

the stationary I once used.

"So how are things," you say.

I ask why you cut your hair.

Birds on the wires,

a necklace of black stones.

We wear the color of these skies

on our skin, and the wind is old.