Because things echo more at this hour.
Because the leaves started falling today,
just as I had begun to believe
they’d be on fire forever.
Because of Christmas lights.
Because he is never going to stop by.
Because of all the things I would trade
for his hands on my back.
Because the sun is high over Jerusalem.
Because all the greats wrote by candlelight.
Because her dimples, wells  
in which I have drowned my loneliness
again and again, appear in my doorway
to say, “I knew you’d be up.”
Because the Seine flowed crimson once.
Because I never did learn to play the guitar.
Because I crave everything.
Because I do not know his middle name,
although I suspect he may have told me
some rum-clouded evening.
Because the Sufis never grow dizzy.
Because of thousands of cigarettes
dangling from thousands of yearning mouths.
Because when is it ever enough.
Because time once passed in a steady march
between the moments when your lips
were near enough to taste,
but now it scatters: grains of sand
from a fractured hourglass
when the wind is blowing.