argument One: i don't write poetry

First draft, last draft, the scribbled-over and re-crumpled story of my life.
Two times thirty five equals one hundred and seventy thousand glimmering nights. Two full moons, two dusty roads, a garbage can fire and that rusted observation tower; we watched planes land at the airport. Flowers grew out of your mouth, or were they words? We were too busy picking diamonds out of the road to notice.
Hope, that scrawny rat with wings, a city dweller's plague, clogging drains with the twisted scraps of dreams deferred. Your strong arms, pulling me through the night, those cobblestoned streets and sleek suburban Levittowns - a more burnished token of hope there never was. Hope, worn on a chain around my neck, a brass luck charm carried through the countries and epochs of my time.
Sometimes your skin grows cold, and the fire in you dies, leaving only the ashes behind. You're a tower of ashes that my breath scatters, leaving piles of cigarette filters in your shoes.
Sometimes a fire inside builds me a home.