In Amsterdam

I was lonely and cold. Singular, I was erasable. It snowed in Amsterdam and in the hostel each night a strange man snored. The noise was a hand or a hand that held me to myself like a mirror holds us up to ourselves. At the park and in the ice bar and at the small carnival with shrill lights and rolled pastries, I wore a thick coat borrowed from Italy and was displaced and amassed at once. I took myself to the floating flower shops and let strange syllables oust the words I knew. So tethered to the sorrow in myself I didn’t see the museum of the man who cut off his own ear to gift to his lover in a case for renewal. In Amsterdam, the canals opened wide and the Dutch drawbridges were clustered with locks meant to signify love though they came to seem more like an argument or shed body parts, less alive than alone. The ear was a flower, the ear was recourse for a lover. But I had nothing—I sent nothing home.