Berlin Poem for Owen

i. I laugh when I realize you’re also noticing the near-naked men in leather harnesses on elevated platforms, everyone feigning nonchalance in the line. You look so polished in your white button-down, so controlled and untouristy we don’t struggle getting past the coat check. Then bursting into the club with you, the guttural thrum of techno and how you aren’t afraid to dance, haven’t been since that boy called you a faggot in the tenth grade. When you’re turning around to get a drink, I find myself randomly in awe of your sturdiness, wanting to tell you we came this far or something equally trite but instead I let you disappear onto the balcony. We grant each other our private fantasies, knowing only a few can converge, lines perpendicular for a long second. That’s how it is, I think, inarticulately, as you return with a gin and tonic, the sort of Zen repose I only get when you’re moving your hips, about to tell me a joke. ii We don’t get home until sunrise, the streets orange-tinted and industrial. Too riled to sleep, we watch a free movie about a teenage drug addict. We are burrowed on the couch like immobilized cats, grotesque, not needing beauty. That is exactly what you do for me. When I met you, we were chubby, suburban, poorly dressed, fourteen. We didn’t know the first thing about our bodies.

We ate together every lunchtime.

Ella Goldblum

66 Sesame, Jump and Elm, in short

67 “Sic, boy!”

68

DOWN

1 “No more for me, thanks”

2 Moolah

3 Place for archery practice

4 Stopovers for travelers

5 Give a wave

6 Insectoid enemy to Godzilla with a 250meter wingspan

7 Trendy berry

8 Chap

9 Irish-born Tony winner Patrick

10 Whichever

11 Fell back, as an army

13 Ties the knot, so to speak

40 Boo

42 Alley-___

44 Homes away from home for diplomats

46 Popeye’s anchor, e.g., for short

48 Slim Shady

50 Like a gym rat, slangily

52 Cty abandoned by Lot

53 Sample given to a drug tester

54 Twins usually share them, briefly

57 “You tagged me!”

58 Confront

60

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