228.

The last time I felt absence,
a well, an echo? The way you can't sit still
is a reminder of this
and I am not quite sure
where I am supposed to bring you.
My reappearances have poor timing,
I know. We all want
to be in two places at once.
Lord knows which one of us
is the dragon.

227.

The worst thing about being
a haunted house? It's
exhausting. Don't get lost here,
nothing is safe, et cetera.
I want to write a decent poem
and fall asleep
at the bottom of the stairs.
No, I want to live outdoors.
Always almost there.
The things I miss don't taste
like anything.

226.

Which nerve was it
running across your spine
that found me after a decade?
I do not know how to carry
anything beyond
a reasonable shelf life
and here you are again
trying to teach me the vocabulary
of apologies
when I'd thought we left this
with empty pockets.
Should I tell you about the things
I owe other people
or the ones that are owed
to my own stomach, palms,
bed? Yes, you were
one of the good ones.
Tell me that's all you needed
to hear.

225.

Once,
I compared you
to the loch ness monster
and you raised your head
out of the water
so far towards the sky
that we all thought
you would snap your neck
trying to prove us wrong.

224. Taxi

All of these tornadoes
In the fields of your hair
In my street
In our spit.
As if your body
Was still mine
To touch.

223. After You've Left

When I was a baby,
our apartment complex caught fire.
They say I slept through everything,
flames and sirens and all of our belongings
being reduced to ash.

As an adult, I have lost this talent.
If I marry you, I will sew Orion
into my dress. I can't figure out
what you want.

Fine, give me this
failure. I would like to live
without the barricades.
Invent colors and assign them
human names.

This is where it begins
to get difficult again.
You look for me without words,
voice. I will not wear white,
I will not ask you to change.

I was born to turn into flame.
I am hard to look at, I know this.
A man is flying here to see if I still light up
the world. Do you know how far
Texas is from Massachusetts?

I can't force it to matter,
can't spark on command.
In my driveway, clumsy.
At the bottom of the stairs,
clumsier still.

You're the only one
I think about.

222. February 16th

You, who cannot fall
asleep with anything around your wrist,

Who are you
to tell any man that he should not be
an island?