Picking Flowers

Somebody is playing the piano for him in the lobby of somewhere. They call milkshakes and ice cream “tornados.” They are trying not to sleep with other people . The coffee flavor is the only one they will eat b/c it has sugar and not chemicals. She walks by at the same time as the other her. He stoops (stops) for a taste. She is a pair of legs reflected in front of a vending machine. She is her, too. Her name is Snoball. He has no name.
His old lady woke him up every morning with a shard of breakfast on a plate; shuffled away past him saying “where the hell did he get an idea like that.” He wishes she knew old Snoball, would have given her a chance.
How she finds him: basketball, uncommon. “It’s okay if you don’t do the whole avocado album,” she says at the gym over noises of bounces, sweat, yellow light.
“I know,” he says, “but it’s my favorite kind of work,” wiping his brow with his wristband. She leads him outside to a very scenic place with a good view of the Statue of Liberty.
“This could get pornographic real fast,” she says. He struggles to stay in the scene, presses himself up to the grime of a few centuries—the finger scabs and germs in the cement lion’s mane. “What are you doing?” she asks, twisting her fingers in his belt loop, pulling him towards her.
“I am picking you flowers,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut.