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A Beautiful Sunday Afternoon

by Ariel Francisco

for Devin

Cradling a bright hangover
on a friend’s couch, sunlight
stretching into the living room
from some open window,
ferrying voices in from the patio,
the smell of coffee crawling
into my nose like sluggish ants.
I could lie here under the weight
of my decisions and indecisions
under the unfamiliar shadows
of unfamiliar furniture until
I become one with this couch.
But I pull myself up the same
way the darkness pulls light
into the room by the fistful
and out into the day where
my friends have been cupping
coffee longer, listening to their
upstairs neighbor wonderfully
practice the saxophone at his
window three stories up while
a mocking bird, invisible in
the shifting leaves overhead,
fails miserably and delightfully
to keep up, to call back each
tune in its own way, its little
broken reflection carrying in
the wind, and it’s almost too
beautiful to bear but I bear it.

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