Poem for my friends

Because there's nothing she can touch that won't be changed
by the pulp of her heartbeat--
I can't help but feel a quiver in my ribcage when the room is silent.
This patchwork quilt is more grey near the top
where my face is and I wonder what that makes me.
As soon as she lit her cigarette
I smelled it three rooms away and inhaled deep that spice
she huffs out the window when he makes her mad.
It's something for her mouth to do.
Her body is a coil, tense with youth and love
and wit and anger and she can burn like magnesium
a blinding whiteness that is difficult to extinguish even if you try.
She thought the alarm chirp was a bird
-- a certain Manhattan species--
and she lowered her eyes when I laughed at her, saying bird? bird?
One time she thought she saw some murderers from her window
loading up a body into an unmarked van late at night
but it turned out not to be.
From her window she can also see Jersey
and when the power all went out over there
it was like the sky was blinking and
you would never know anything had ever existed beyond the water.
I feel myself loving her, the way a sister does
mood lifting almost unconsciously
when she enters the room.
I sit here with the lights off in the afternoon
and it's only when she comes home that I realize I'm sitting in the dark.