.    ironic
really

          the brain stem controls involuntary movement
     and lies just inside
the flesh that i can't help but check
for the glass and pebbles
     you left behind

there's something in the way in which grown men cry
          that begs us to fall to our knees
     and weep
for the heart ache that we've given to our fathers

Skies like sheets of shale
floated above our pretty heads,
shedding fat drops of rain
upon an unseasonably warm
December day in Michigan.

I broke free from your grip
beneath our shared plastic umbrella,
ran into the yard
and spun around six times,
arms outstretched like an albatross,
face upturned to the miles and miles
of unbroken grey clouds.

I stopped and called to you,
fly with me.
as my palms turned up
and reached for you, involuntarily.

You laughed, staccato,
and your ambiguous smile
was nothing more than
an ugly daguerreotype
set before a landscape
of compassionate trees.

I'd rather not get wet,
you said

and I think
I've always resented you
for that.

I told you that I missed you
as I grew nostalgic for things
that were never mine
in the first place.

Memories committing verbicide,
bringing to mind your voice
singing love songs in the moonglow,
and censoring the ugliness
of those words you really said.

I told you I missed you
because the words were festering
in my brain and filling my lungs
with air too heavy to breathe.

I told you that I missed you
because I've finally figured out
that all of your little injustices,
all of those things I should've called treason,
don't even begin to match
the chasm you left in my world
when you left.

You are missing from me
and I am a ghost without you.

I told you all of it,
déjà vu bitter on my tongue,
and I blinked as the words floated off
into the space between our lips.

Too little, too late,
you said,
*your love
is only ashes.