GLORIA SWANSON’S EX-HUSBAND WAS A SOLDIER ❋ Julian Flavin

Perfecting the art of leaving your house
5 hours late,
wordless as a steamboat
in the drag of the afternoon.
Hiding in yourself.
Feeling like a man who parachuted down to earth
and never took off the parachute,
it’s limp sail and endless coils
caked in mud and dust,
dragging eternally along the ground
tangling around beams, poles, and posts.
You’re being choked by the snug harness,
weighed down by military paraphernalia.
But as the sun beats heavily
on your off-black hair
you remember
how good it felt
to leap out of the plane
and be lead
by the careful
wind.

Nowhere to be, just
wind.