You fell asleep before I even got my bra off
Giving me a B for half-assed, dreaded, and deadened effort

Tuesday night Adderall highs
Strung out on sleepless Spotify

We scuffed across the wide sidewalks, 3 AM *****
persuading us the dim-lit bridge wouldn’t fall away beneath
our curiosity to see the university’s emptiness, content
in August’s stagnancy. I tried to picture thousands of strangers
walking different paths to reach their point B,
but soon we stepped off yellow-toned brick and I saw hippies
laying on the ground outside a pub, smoking joints.
One woman with hip-length dreads, her face as wrinkled
as crumpled love letters hidden behind my dresser, pointed
and said, You’ll forget yourself some day.

Months later, I blinked awake in the tank as dawn crept
through my cell bars, quietly, like the disappointment on my birthdays
or Mom’s sighs when she browsed the mail for child support checks
never sent by my train-wreck, truck deck loving old man
who ****** me off when I mistook him for that self-righteous cop
hell-bent on teaching me a lesson of respect.
He had that patronizing presence, and it blinded me with magma
rage I felt in my arms, through my knuckles, right to his rib cage.
I still don’t remember the way back to that dingy pub.

she was a bird on the water
she was clouds reflected
she was trees sighing in the wind
she was sunlight through Venetian blinds
she was dust motes circling lazily
she was Sunday morning ***
she was smiling at me in the mirror
she was bonfires under a pale moon
she was tidal waves of emotion
she was whirlpools of conviction
she was typhoons of jealousy
and I was there too

she is the silhouette of a cigarette pressed to my teeth
she is my shadow cast behind me in the setting sun
she is blue-tinged smoke silently filling the room
she is burning my eyes like chlorine in a crowded pool
she is bars of the cage where my mind is kept penned
she is electric fencing wrapped around my heart
she is buckets of tar drowning me in my dreams
she is written in cursive on the insides of my eyelids
she is slowly shriveling my liver and blackening my lungs
she is living in all the mirrors I look into
she is becoming brobdingnagian prose
maybe that's just me but,

I'm not there anymore.
So why is she still here?