My wife, a psychiatrist, sleeps
through my reading and writing in bed,
the half-whispered lines,
manuscripts piled between us,

but in the deep part of night
when her beeper sounds
she bolts awake to return the page
of a patient afraid he'll **** himself.

She sits in her robe in the kitchen,
listening to the anguished voice
on the phone. She becomes
the vessel that contains his fear,

someone he can trust to tell
things I would tell to a poem.

"It's been less than a year."
He said with sincerity
Did he believe it?
Was the question
The answer was

i'm sorry,
some things just don't
change-

(you could tell me
you still love me
one thousand times
and it wouldn't
make a difference;
i started tracing
his name into
the margins of my
school papers long
before you were
gone)

maybe it's time we just
forget

i know that we all break in different
ways (and who am i to talk?) but
i thought you were stronger than that.

you said you were the man
who fell in love with a star
and you couldn't understand how
a mere mortal
could fall in love with something so far away

maybe I am a star
but stars have no substance
I am nothing but chemicals
so big, so bright
so distant, so empty

here I am, adrift in orbit
of a black hole
of illness and self destruction
dark, haunting
waiting to **** me in

you wonder how insignificant you must be
to all of us above
but I think you look quite
enormous
and it makes me feel small

don't come closer, dear
or you'll burn
and if you wait long enough
maybe it'll be time for me
to burn up, too