i told my mother
this place haunted me in my sleep
feverish
sweet-syrupy, drowning in other people's memories
he reminds me of someone a long time ago
small and broken
tough, i even remember
that other person saying
if he ever got a tattoo, it would be a smiley face
on his arm--
exactly the same as the one this boy has.
he wakes up with the dust of last night's numbness
in his eyes, washes it out first thing with a warm beer
and stumbles around the ***** glasses, tripping
over the bits of broken rules on the floor, fumbling
for a slightly crumpled cigarette.
he says good morning when it's three oclock in the afternoon,
because bedtime was nine am, and creatures only come out at night--
because he feels safer in the dark,
because there's something
inside him that cracked once
and will never grow back, something inside him
that i bruised and made him give to me, made him hold me
as if i were the damaged one.
i know these small dark spaces so well--
i sleep right next to them, try not to roll over
and fall in. these cavities dark like
dilated pupils, huge and haunting, pulling the light away
i remember this face but i don't know
where have we met? you couldn't be the boy i knew
and yet
you're so familiar.