I am talking to my friend on a Friday night     talking 

on my phone             an unusual stranger

close like Leonard Cohen’s hand next to his heart

on Crescent Street       I am watching a girl

fall out of an Audi door        Sephora cheek 

on the pavement            in the club-glow 

            skin is the colour of Lenny’s hand

skin as she folds out on the road like a velvet calf

    silver rim-teeth slowed        she will be okay

she will be okay        her friend is wearing a halo

from Dollarama            a GHB-slowed walk

she will be okay    it’s Halloween    it’s three a.m. 

there is nothing and no one here   except men

who would call me sister and then  the angel

hooks her arms    drags her friend to the sidewalk

nobody steps out of the lineup behind them

nobody crosses the street to give them a hand

somebody will want to turn this into a poem about

Leonard    because his hand has been lit

this entire time    there are no other hands in the picture

somebody will want to say 

it’s because he’s made for these late nights

porous oranges    Turkish coffee    a friend

on the phone

but this is a poem about a girl 

watching another girl    hoping

for nothing in particular

otherwise known as  dangerous

by people who are not us.