the new cat litter box
sits alone
in the corner by the door

where you last left
for good

with your shoes
and your cat
and some potatoes
I cooked for you

I am too neurotic
you said
thoughtless and rude

the perpetual thinker of the
unimportant

obsessing over how big a one cm
canker sore is and is it maybe cancer instead

and it's true
I worry constantly

for the past ten years
while we played out this game
of cat and mouse
I worried I'd never see you again

never have you here
never feed you
never laugh with you
never hear you tell me
don't worry honey
my little worry wart
you are okay
don't worry so much
I'm here...

but the truth is
you are not

you were more annoyed
than amused
more angered than empathetic
more certain than not

so you took the cat
and my dreams
and you left

at some point
I'll clean out the litter box
and crawl under my bed
to find the little stuffed white
mouse
I bought for Billie Holiday

and I'll put it away
save it somewhere
to find in a year or two
on some quiet gray Sunday
afternoon
and maybe for that moment
forget to worry about anything
at all

white edges of truths
dance and lose themselves
against the blue drape of sky

I swam off the tips
of your fingers
and found the bottom
of
everything

....surfacing in the dead
of winter
or even under a hot dry
summer sun

I shiver

I expect and decide
nothing
while
the day aches inside a
a cocoon of reality
waiting for my heart
to butterfly
again

I find there is only today
and your face gone
like cherry blossoms
and yesterdays rain

the night
longing under a moon
that will leave it
a million times
more

remembering
my trail of a thousand
kisses showering
your ignorant cheek
in the ochre light
of morning

falling away
like a dream

the day ends
again...

evening blurs
the edges of my sight;

dark violet drifts
of ecstasy
confiscate my mind

I am here still
without reason
amongst the ruins
of "what if's"and
'what might have been's"

of a soon
griefless history

it is quiet here

so quiet
where truth speaks
in wordless, depthless
shadows
of recognition
haunting my soul

deeper than
I can remember or forget
I know now
you were never
here at all

and oh the madness,

the bitter sadness
I taste still
between these sheets

and oh,

the forever violence
of this silence

in my heart

to set the world right again
would take your eyes
round and black
as a child's

and your hand
smooth as polished
stone
and soft as cake flour

the wind came up
I wasn't looking

it's been a decade almost

the world and my heart
askew

one consonant,
two vowels

to right it all,

you

in the quiet
I’ll remember
a hundred lifetimes
with you

fallen cherry blossoms
and my breath
stolen like summer

the forever bereft
fantasy
forged and fraught

beneath fingertips
of ecstacy;
lips
of sorrow

the truth of hearts
running nowhere
but here

the shadow
of your voice
slipping like rain

the sound
of your feet
in the wet distance

and something of
your ample body
and wide embrace
lingering like a nebulous
of violent/violet dream

across the broken/blue
horizon of my soul

you have left me to
wonder
year after year
as cherry blossoms
bloom and fall
along the side of the road

did we ever want to be more
than the cherry blossoms
you and i ~
beautiful and lost

there would be somewhere
I found

a voice, a hand,

a heart

but not just any

these days are useless
now
at least to me

you,

you fly on
gathering speed,

a sail in the wind

I watch
from a soft sad sky

longing,
those forever years...

that never happened

the days
when sun spoke stronger
than anyone;

the light glittering in
your eyes

your hands,
my world

something simple then

lost

in  this tangled web
we weave

under a sky of dreams

the tip of a perfectly rounded felt pen
pressing with both purpose yet restraint,
the ink taking to the paper as if magnetic,
then spreading slow and sure

that is how it was,
perhaps still is,
between you and I

as I try to  think of an answer;
a way to figure it all out
and leave it
in a nice tidy heap
behind us

those around me seem have to stumbled
purposely or not,
onto the answer  
maybe they just put themselves out there
and do the only thing there really is left to do:

Carry on

sooner or later
the past loses it's luster and appeal
like last years pair of Louboutin's
out with old, in with the new

but no matter how far into the future
my heart continues to carry on
no matter how much luster and appeal
fades away from the shiny patina
of my idealized love

still,
you mar me

like a water colored stain of faded ink,
bled soft and permanent