;do you ever wonder
about the difference between looking at something
and the hallucination created
when looking past it?
if you look at  your hand
it's all you can see
but if you look past your hand
there are now two of them
sometimes it's hard for me
to remember which is real
it gets me thinking
about how my father
used to wake me up
in the morning by rubbing
his stubble across my face
if i could be his favorite color
on our bathroom floor
he would forget why he left
the paramedics were all sobing
as they pumped memories
out of my stomach
i've been choking on the splinters
for 14 years
it's been 14 years
since the last dinner plate
exploded on our dining room wall
14 years since my mother
started accidentally setting your place at the dinner table
14 years since italian night
at the restaurant on the corner
where the juke box
and like so many other things
it stopped working when you left
i guess it's no coincidence
since the juke box went quiet
that the cds in my car
only skip on "i miss you"
i've been hemorrhaging memories
for so long
and now that i'm looking back
i can no longer tell
the mirage from the truth
sometimes i swear
you showed up to my graduation
and last time
i was at your apartment
i can't remember
if the imprints of my hands
are in clay hanging on your wall
or if they were left in the mud
the day god had the audacity
to let it rain
or maybe it's like the time
i saw someone crying on a bridge
now that i think about it
i can't remember if it was me