If time is a convincing illusion, then as I am writing this,
you are reading it; you are remembering me years after
we have spoken last, and I am noticing you for the first time.

I'm a young woman waking up in an apartment in Albany,
New York, realizing that I am finally broken enough to fix,
and an East Boston moppet in ***** pink overalls, riding
Big Wheels through the sprinklers with a boy named John Henry.

You're delivering newspapers on a cold New Hampshire morning.
I am falling asleep wondering if you could possibly love me.
You are saying that you do. You are stardust, and I am long gone.

Kindergarten

I don't know if I believe in God,
but I believe in heaven and angels
and the power of the vet,
so I mutter to them
in a sticky panic
when the rubber tire of the
UPS truck
catches your tail,

your midsection,

and irons your round belly
into the sidewalk.

I think this is the day I stop being a dog person.

The carpet is stained with your beer.

You used to have the sharpest mouth
a tongue like a serpent's in slow motion
as it flicks, nay as it laps into the dark of my mouth.
Your lips felt like frozen lines of gasoline.

They tasted like the fires of the oil refinery.

I used to beg you to let me ride with you
through the forested paths lacing behind my house
on your mobylette we would fly down the gravel
like birds upon a cloud, with more bumping and rattling.

But birds aren't aroused by the turbulence of clouds.

I loved the feeling of my arms about your waist
holding you close as a reminder that if I let go
I would fall and when the day came that I let go
standing in the living room as you drank beer...

There was no where to fall but up.

that anyone could make me feel naked in
suspense, a need to curl my fingers? I'll remind myself
that I need my bed rest, that I need
the thing that heals, that I need
anything at all is too much, it's too
tedious to need, I won't admit to
it, most of the time I won't.

groaning grows from the throat,  trickling down,
my voice isn't sweet like honey,
but more harsh harsh harsh in ways like
dry swallowing big pill after pill after pill.

the ends of my fingers are beams, they are brightest
when I touch the space between me and
the space between you and the soft space
left after drinking what we
bottle
up,

every time
every time.