We drop that hour—still quaking, carnal—
to suffocate in the East River, a pale hull

below the train station’s blue light,
eerie, makeshift temple.

Then the hour on the platform after,
carbon billowing in a trance, the glow

uncanny as a moon-illumined boathouse
rippling the walls in kantha prints and jade,

as if we could breathe underwater.
Alive amid everything, your presence

and my plunge into the fog of the train—
a gestured flight—our sweat a vapor.

Our ancestors prayed for such radiance.