She had the cat-like grace
Of an infatuation betrayed,
Love, but never forgotten.

She’d sneer promises today,
As she’d perfected prior,
With that same curl of the lip,

The smirk born Juarez,
Cacti and Rio, whilst
I’d only show my tummy;

Something tougher and
Catalyzed within a scar,
This chasm stained the,

“We” atop yesteryear
And the “me” I’d be
Tomorrow –

One more hour,
Wanting, wasted, waylaid,
And never to let go.

The first love’s an archetype,
This first kiss, an epitaph,
Did you ever let me go?

My mother misses me.
She called,
But I wouldn’t pick up.

Something feels safer,
And everything else, better,
When I’m away.

And yet, I see her,
Head in hands; crying,
“Will he ever come home?”

But with not one picture,
If only nothing, left behind,
It’d never be real again.

Emptied, would be home,
Lost, lacked a moment captured,
The effigy, smoldering, at best.

And still, she calls,
Answered, only my ringtone,
She’d never take my name away,

She’d said, “Son,” and
I’d pray for her to stop crying,
So that I may finally start.

She bestowed, “hero,”
Upon my broken brow,

Come the other hand that’d
caress my limp ivory ankle.

And I’d offer only tales,
The fables wrought one –

Someone, far away.

So to, the bedridden,
She’d drop a grape.

A majestic purple,
Incomparable, my tear;

And I’d offer only love,
Not to her,

But the one who’d spite.

He coughed in the corner,
With a mangled leg.

He smirked under stars,
With a bowl pocked rice.

They’d spit, they’d scoff,
With their children in tow.

I’d drop change,
With lint left a pocket.

But he’d buy beer knowing –
All’d be well tonight.

I like walking in the fog.
I like the cold.
I love being damp,
Because wet’s taken wrong,
Wrong’s ‘round the corner,
But one or two more steps,
And inches nigh, disfigured.

When the sun burns through,
And it does,
I feel like I’m on fire,
But happy with being bright,
Being light. “Light” being –
It’s been awhile
Since I’ve seen the sun.

So I fall in love with the sunrise,
The light and not the stranger.
“It’s the real deal,” I mumble,
But funny enough,
I miss the fog over time,
And the stranger even more,
And slightly later.

Kisses, killed, and mementos –
The years prior – remain as lipstick
Atop fossilized paper, archived eras,
And stuffed in drawers that
Still bedevil
Whilst I seek –

One last pluck, one last taste,
Or one more, "good night,"
From lips never more,
Never to be tender, nor tended,
Never to taunt again.
And it was “then,”
That something was stolen.

I stumble atop subliminal,
     One bourbon
     For – Her,
     One bourbon
     For – Me.
     Over and over,
     If only and later
To saunter before granite.

Sure, she’d have been my bride,
Someday –
Promised and carved in oak.
And sure, I’d have been her groom,
Someday –
But epochs come and go,
Papyrus fades and presses fail;

All and parallel the coma wished for –
Prisons beholden broken records
That make the memories hurt;
Agony, like a shard of something,
Not in my brain,
But in my everything.