It had been three years then,
but in many ways
it seemed so much longer than that

I could still taste you
when my eyes were closed;
hear your laughter
between the night and darkness.

I can’t remember the exact instant,
but I knew;
I knew that you wouldn’t be back.
It was the same as when I realized
our dear Czar wouldn’t return in the spring.

He stared at her through campfire;
its flames sounding like a babbling creek,
and through the smoke he knew
that if he had been God, he would have thought
how perfectly he created the world.

Everyone rejoiced over the Humbolt Park gator being caught
but I wept alone
in my office
under the slightly angry glow of fluorescent lighting.

We don't know much about Chance's life,
but... we can assume a lot:
we can assume he lived in a basement
dark and dank
in a kiddie pool
with ***** water.
We can assume that he had a uv light,
but that he was a stranger to the sun,
to other animals,
to the feel of fresh water, and yet...

For six days he became Godzilla.
Imagine the triumph!
Crocodilians have been around since the Triassic,
but never in all those millions of years,
did one dream that it would go from a ***** basement
to being the apex predator
in an ecosystem where no one knew his name.

People complained that
he must have been confused,
scared
terrified for his tiny reptilian life,
but I never thought that.  
- I imagined him enjoying his triumph
as he paddled through the lagoon,
the sun on his back.

And when we two parted
I wandered your apartment
placing my life
into a shopping bag,
but under your bed
I hid a photograph of us.

I hope that some day you find it,
that you say that I was EVERYTHING
that you needed,
but...
I'll settle for you remembering how in love we were,
and realizing that somewhere
that person whom you loved still lives
somewhere in me.

No one else was there with us;
so I don't care what any of them think.
They don't know how sweet that wine tasted
on hot summer days up in the cool clouds.

God knows I wish I was better than I am,
good enough to make you stay.
The city lights  burned so extravagantly
I had to know they'd burn out.

The love pulsed out of you that summer,
and I couldn't find the wound
as the life bled out of us
through the fingers of our intertwined hands -
- yet still -
in that moment,
there was a gentleness to you, lady -
- like a deer in mourning fog

I hope that someday
you find an old letter from me,
and that when you brush it off
you miss me