This is a lonely poem,
a half an hour before dawn poem,
a poem like an empty kitchen –
a godforsaken (god, I'm shaking)
feeling like I just want to go home
poem. (and I am home)

In the minutes before sleep last night,
through stellar static, astral snow,
a poem, half dreamt, was born
and died; I drifted off and let it go.

Just one line survived the night;
that line will have to be enough.
I wrote it down before it faded:
sometimes we were good at love.

Have you ever written about love
until your eyelids were heavy
and tears drip dropped
from your eyes,
when clearly you knew
you had awakened the beast
that lies inside you,
deep and wide.

This is when I hear the world begin
to count the ways
it can swing
against my pride.  
When I want to hear you say
I am beautiful
wipe away
the tears I cry.

I could proclaim that roses
slide over all of my shadows
and hold me close
until I no longer want
to be anywhere else.  
Say farewell
to these lines I write,
put them on a shelf.

Yet still, I write of the love I know,
day by day, on paper
until the ink of my soul
becomes a gentle scent
which fades into each page.
Again I wake the beast
inside of my heart's cage.

When I gave you your heart back
        
                  You claimed it didn't fit right anymore
                         You claimed it didn't feel like it used to
                          

Now I understand what you meant.

Liz had hers on a Wednesday afternoon
in her car. She tells me about it over lunch;
a backseat full of groceries and halfway home,
she felt something breaking inside her,
so she drove to the lake and sat very still, waiting.

Then it happened, she says, I broke right open.
I wept, then sobbed, then wailed. There was no bottom.

She says she may have even fallen asleep, she doesn't know;
she does know that she eventually stopped crying,
that inside she felt like the fields must feel after a hard rain.

Here, she says, moving her hand to her chest, I just felt brand new again.
I'm a better wife now, she says, a better person.

Good, Liz, good, I say.

I don't tell her about that morning in the shower,
when the water warmed me but could not console me,
or how I'm no better for it.