The Chase

   When you’ve found a couch in the alley behind your tenth floor loft
                                                   or a discount store by your six tatami mat room
                                                   or an abandoned dorm, abandoned every year,
           move across the ocean

              or you’ll wake up with your mom in the next bedroom, in her next bedroom,
                                          wondering why you never got your own
                apartment, and why she hates

your boyfriend and you can’t say love . . .

                        but his eyes reflect you recall:
                   the beautiful pines out the window where you were alone
                                                                                               with the same blue
couch.