The noise from the back room
Filters to the front
Flowing up the stairs
Seamlessly through the air
Passing from the actors
To the watchers
And eventually
Towards her ears.

For those in the back room
It can be both imagined
That she will hear
And believed
That she will not

So on that paradoxical duality
The actors settle.

They place their faith,
Their religion,
Their belief
On contradiction

As they must.

But of course
When believing in a future,
If an actor
Or when hoping for a future,
If a watcher
Those in the back room
Are quite often wrong

Maybe
She will hear
And maybe
She will know forever
What the actors did
And what the watchers watched
And the god with a lower-case 'g' knows
It will **** her

But as long as those acting in the back room
Believe
And as long as those watching in the back room
Hope

No harm
Will come
To
Them.

"Come exploring with me, darling
Let's fall in love
By the side of a man-made lake
Which man has lost to time"

Letting gravity take us to its floor
I looked in your eyes
And you looked in mine
But the glances we exchanged
Were radically different somehow

"Hold my hand as I fall asleep
And remind me in the morning
Of how bad my lips tasted
So we can laugh about it
All afternoon"

Lying in that cozy little nest
I was off and on hard through the night
Never really knowing how hard,
As our bodies pressed together,
You were trying to love me too

"Let's ride our bikes
Still through that thunderstorm
Which somehow in all the time that's gone by
Has never ceased to rain."

Even as a writer,  the real world
Often seems too well described by metaphor
(You wrote on cotton candy clouds
"Rain, rain, go away
Come again
Tomorrow")

"And we can stay up late
Rolling joints; smoking six
Remembering all the things"
Through vastly different lenses
"That of course we could never forget"

I was so high that night
That I don't even remember all that happened
So I kind of hope I kissed you
Just to know I kissed you once
Not thinking it was a last kiss

"Maybe someday,
When the sun rises in the window,
We'll know that at the next sunrise
We'll both still be in that bed
Smoking joints and kissing
And falling even further
Into love."

I miss you
On mornings like this one.

"Come exploring with me, darling..."