Venice, Unaccompanied Poem by Monica Youn

Waking
on the train, I thought
we were attacked
by light:
chrome-winged birds
hatching from the lagoon.
That first day
the buoys were all
that made the harbor
bearable:
pennies sewn into a hemline.
Later I learned to live in it,
to walk
through the alien city—
a beekeeper's habit—
with fierce light
clinging to my head and hands.
Treated as gently as every
other guest—
each house's barbed antennae
trawling for any kind
of weather—
still I sobbed in a glass box
on an unswept street
with the last
few lire ticking like fleas
off my phonecard I'm sorry
I can't
stand this, which
one of us do you love?