130. Patience.

I believe that need
of another human
is a myth.
I can not give my body
or nourishment,
but I will write you
poems, paint you tulips,
and speak embers
until I'm warm enough
again.

129.

In ruffling through pages of sketchbooks
searching for a drawing of goldfish
(specifically, for the movement
and softness in their caudal fins),
you find the note
and even though there has been time
and even though it says nothing of importance
(something about meeting after work,
plans, a drink, something about soon)
and even though you have been
what one might describe as "fine,"
you are forced to put your hand
over your mouth because something
is coming up fast, choking or noise
or vomit or an animal cry
that is determined to force its way out,
and your face does not feel like your own
with your fingers pressing into it
and your eyes are the Mississippi
and everything is holding you too tightly
and the fish are still missing, swimming somewhere
on some other pages,
and you have a deadline
and you haven't done nearly enough with the day,
and the water runs faster than you do,
and everything but him has always run faster than you do,
and he
will not be coming
back.

128. On being awake.

I am my own
physician, tracking
the progress.
How selfish am I,
wanting to make a dent
in a life
when I am no
overwhelmingly
towering
city.

127.

And so the notches on my ribs multiply,
living well is the best revenge, etcetera.
Yet I still think of you when I buy train tickets,
and plant flags for your specter in every city.

126.

I wear the letter L on my glove
like a lie, like an albatross.
I can't wish you well,
can't forgive you,
can't remove the shape of your ghost
from the Sunday morning light
pushing through the curtains,
can't stop imagining you with her,
can't forgive her either,
can't stop missing your friends,
your family, your dog,
can't do anything but overwork myself,
can't stop the dreams, the panic,
the sickeningly wishful thinking.
This is why people kill themselves
after the death of a relationship:
not because they can't live without
a person, but because they can't outrun
or soothe or talk themselves out of
everything after.

YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE
WHO HAS HAD THIS LOSS.

125.

They say that deja vu occurs
because we have come to a checkpoint
that we put down in our life chart
to assure our human selves
that we are on the correct place
in our path. I have only experienced
deja vu twice, but tonight as I turned
onto my street, listening to the Magnetic Fields
with my coat buttoned up to my chin,
thirty years of gravity rushed into my body
and I understood that it was all right
to be here without you, and miss you,
and to work late, and write poems, and pause
at the flower shop's steps
every morning, and to not want
to love anybody right now, and put extra milk
in my coffee, and be angry, and hopeful
and panicked and this. I am here, I am here,
I am here.

124.

A list of words
that I can no longer appreciate:
copilot, cage, trouble, taciturn.

The shortest distance between
two points is a line.

Euclid once defined the point as
that which has no part.
Analog watches have approximately
one-hundred and eighteen parts,

and I could not give less of a shit
about time.

I'm sorry for the mischief.
This isn't going very well.

I dreamed that we were snowed in
at a motel in Philadelphia.
I pointed out the window and said,
"I have been here before,"
except this time I was delighted.

I think I saw her on the train once.
The orange line, downtown crossing
to north station. She saw me, too.
She was shorter than I expected.
Wore more makeup than I expected.

And I don't know, sometimes the room
is soft yellow, sometimes it's not
a color at all. I am still adjusting
to this new sense of vision.
It doesn't make very much sense.

I imagine that in another life --
well, I imagine many tangents,
but I will start small:
I could listen to a song about New Hampshire
and feel joy.

123. A haiku: Because I would like for you to understand the line that was drawn in the dirt.

You wanted to know
why he loved me. This is it:
Light, courage, patience.