Sitting on a rock
In the middle of a little pond
With a girl I met just once before,
I looked at the treetops
(All ash trees;
All ash soon)
And thought about kissing

But the weight
Of all the lips I’d kissed before
Kept my mouth from hers;
Kept ‘her’
From becoming ‘you’

And as the first drops of rain
Began to fall like thunder
And I fled that little swamp,
Leaving the almost ash
Ash trees behind,
I felt a twinge of sadness
Despite my better judgment
And I thought
More about kissing

the curtains in this room are shut
but there is sunlight spilling out from under
and around them
it’s like the world
wants me as much as
I wish I wanted it

the last time we spoke I
forgot to use vowels
and i blamed it on
bad reception,
but it was really just me
your words live
with the dust particles
floating in
negative space -
I breathe you in,
but don’t notice

i decide to keep the curtains closed
at least for today
it’s the only thing i can do
to keep your ghost away

the time spent hoping
for rain has been futile.
With each minute passing
second hand tumble our
memories become reduced
to questions, so as I’m
waking up in taxi cabs
wondering where the sky
went, I’ll think of your
lips ******* cancer and
your fingers holding
your future like a
crystal ball fortune
gypsy screaming “these
coming days will be
hard! Your lungs will
collapse and your heart
will turn to stone!”
But you smile and cough
and I imagine you
crying when I say
there is nowhere to go
from here. And now the
taxi man is demanding
a location, but I only
can give him snapshots
with sun-faded ink
cursive and he kicks me
out so I walk home
and try to sleep and
in the morning I forgot
what I did and who I
saw so I didn’t even bother
saying goodbye