You were late.
So late that I had given up on you
but when I first saw you extinguishing a smoke in the struggling grass
I knew it was you
and I called your name
and this was my first glimpse of you,
fumbling to hide your vices,
hair springing around your face
like a thousand little Slinkies
yearning to get free.

You were late.
So late that I had given up on you
on the 7th floor of a hospital,
my first hospital,
we sat outside and fumbled with our vices
and you told me it was over,
two kids ****** into the murky pond of
ADULT ISSUES,
neither one of us did our job very well
and all my fellow patients kept telling me how pretty you were that night.

You were late.
At 21 you were too late to save me
but I never gave up on you.
Forgiveness is an unfaithful mistress
and I look back and sigh,
remembering the ease with which I hated you.

You are late.
I am still waiting.
I am waiting.

This is a hieroglyph in the middle of the ocean,
a message to the center of space,
it is Stravinsky in a metal box;
a prayer in the grave.
It is not to be heard, read, or felt,
but is sent out into the darkness
like the wheezing breath from my last cigarette ,
the chill of the last river I altered with my step,
the forever in the space between our eyes,
and the time machine of you and I.
There is a snap of electricity that moves you from here to there
and there is our world in the hollow spaces of your brain.
You are the blood, you are the marrow,
you are in my depths and in my narrows.

There was a little boy who saw a tail on the sun,
wandered into the wrong back door
and stumbled out the front
with a pocket full of kisses,
and there was a girl who was far from home,
tiny hands and full of wishes.

Close your eyes.

Do not read this next part.
It's a secret I cannot share.

There is a picture that I look at often and it is of a ridge of mountains,
snow on top, jagged edges like a page ripped from a magazine
and I know now what I didn't know then
that after I snapped that shot everything would change,
that I would go home and become something I never could be again,
that I would discard gods like tissue
and drive my car as fast as it would go in the rain,
that I would share this picture on a tilting Saturday night
with a sigh and the subtle rustling of metal and cloth,
a susurration settling over us like a shroud,
and that I would surrender myself to the chaos,
lose everything within our delicious destruction
and spend the rest of my life wondering where all the pieces of me landed.

This is a riddle you are not meant to understand.
This is a Celtic Cross spread by a dead man's hand.

I am hanging underneath an iron bar,
little shoulders aching,
sweaty fingers scraping off ochre with each sad little swing.
You are leaving and I am wearing a grubby white shirt.
The one with the little train on it.

Your leaving is not like in the movies,
which is all I know of leaving,
and you are not looking back at me through the dusty rear window as your family pulls away.
There is no little hand waiving me goodbye.
Simply, one minute you are there
and the next you are gone
and I am all alone.

Your house stood vacant for a season or two
and I would sneak into your back yard,
our back yard,
and stare into the empty rooms.
The plate glass was cool against my forehead
but something inside of me smouldered.

The new owners did not have a collie
or a pesky little sister
and they certainly did not have you.

I am waiting there.

I am still waiting.

We will go over that hill right there,
the one yearning for the sky like the earth took a breath and held it for a million years.
Then down in the valley, just to the left,
we will find a little path,
a dry artery through the lonely trees,
and soon we will burst forth into a little meadow, a perfect circle.
If we squint a little we can see the ghosts
of pagans cavorting around an angry fire and
perhaps we will wish to be wild, free, and dangerous too.
We can sit, if you'd like,
or we can measure the meadow's circumference with careful steps,
we can find the very center and stand terribly close,
or we can each choose a side and negotiate a truce.
Perhaps I will take your hand.
Perhaps we will share a kiss.
Mostly we will stare in silence because of the unyielding distance between us
even perfect meadows cannot fill.