Still High When We Find Out My Father Has Died

We dance down the limbs
of Parisian streets
into the fountain-night.

Shimmy ourselves
across cobblestone-gray
giggling “husband” and “wife.”

Pigeons peck in,
to gnaw on our feet,
eating our toes like crumbs.

Red umbrellas
on empty patios
sway in a sweatless thrum.

Stray cats scatter
when my jelly-phone rings,
pulling us out of our frame.

The street lamp burns
yellow in my head
long after you stop
laughing my name.

Lisa Alletson grew up in South Africa and the UK, and lives in Canada. She has poetry and prose forthcoming or published in New Ohio Review, The Lumiere Review, Sledgehammer Lit, Anti-Heroin Chic, and The Bangalore Review.