No. 34
You are still gone,
but I still feel your arms around me,
remember your hands like a phantom pain.
I should’ve known.
Not for me. You’re the real thing.
Pure as a secret stash.
The good china.
Kept in good company.
You’re the green light on the other side of the lake,
Christmas Eve, new millennium.
That impossible.
You couldn’t be so.
You couldn’t love me.
Not now.
Oh, but you would’ve.
You’d have sweated and romanced
me, brought me lilies and gray
clouds, two-chord serenaded
me from the Margarita boathouse.
I tried to explain us.
Gave the shorthand, sketched
a nature morte with guitar strings, sails,
and a suspension bridge.
Noted the French, the haphazard Aikido,
San Francisco, Dave Matthews, and the square
hamburgers you like.
Described your hands around my waist,
the feel of a focused chi.
Remembered the Sunday that you called,
your name misspelled, your telephone number on a post-it,
tucked away in the cardboard box where I hide my trophies.
The swiped picture of you propped up on my bookcase,
looking down on me from atop the unabridged French dictionary.
I should’ve called. Semaphored.
Sent roses and explained.
I was sick.
I wanted to come.
I wanted to come to you.
I wanted everything.
I still do.
Nothing to do.
Nothing to do.
But think dirty sweet thoughts of you.
Scribbling poems like a sneeze.
If you came back,
I’d bake you cookies
and play you songs on my
dirty guitar.
I’d bathe you and pet you,
mend your socks and
lick your toes.
Oh you were so.
So everything, everything
I never knew
I always wanted.
Page(s) 30-31
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