Without fail
Sundays at the cinema
were always rainy days
big black umbrellas
clashing against the ticket booth.
The doorman among the torn stubs
looked like a watercolor
hung crookedly on a kitchen wall.
We waited anxiously in the front row
until the horizontal beam lit
a band of white dust and settled on the screen.Always the same old films
soundtrack crackling like handfuls of rice
thrown at the newlyweds’ white car.
Beautiful actors kissed
as if for the first time.

When the lights came on
and we saw our faces
and shook out our frozen limbs
we were an allegory for desire and disappointment,
like pale fences in our backyards
on which mother used to dry the laundry-
fences that were once full of color and life.