you’re getting married
in less than twenty-four hours

yet, here you are --
saying hello on my doorstep,
rocking on the ***** of your heels,
nervously clutching your floral skirt
like the way you did
when you're still on
first dates and first bases
sipping ***** instead
of swallowing the shots down

you talk about the towns
that you had driven through
the past two hours --
just so you could see me

but I don't
think,

that you're here
just to say hello
and talk about
the towns you've
driven by

we sit, on the flagstone
mezzanine, idle talks
flowing through pretentious lips
but always dancing, always skirting
past the things we both
know we want to talk about

but we never mention
them out loud

we eat the gravel and grit
and ashes of burnt-out loves
fill our mouths

we are both dying
to say,
what we are both dying
to hear.

it's already late,
later than I would have
allowed myself to
let you stay,

but we open a few more
bottles of beer
you still swirl your
drink in your cup,
let it slosh before you sip
on it -- you still
like to pretend it's *****
when it's just cheap beer

when the moon finally shines
over the ridge of Sierra del Fuego,
an orange coin someone
had hung in the midst
of a blackberry sky,
it beckons you to leave
for home, and you heed
the call

I wish that you hadn't,
because as much as much
as I want you for myself I,
also wish for you to be happy,
and I want you to be free
of me, of what I am -- a liability,
a constant reminder
that you must be responsible
for whatever consequence we
might bring to each other

so I remain silent,

let myself choke on the words
I would have wanted
you to hear, and I
wath you as you
drive away in a Ford,
dust exploding in a
flurry of clouds behind your tires
as it tears through the
gravel pathway that traverses
in front of my house
for the northern highway
where the thorn bush
with the pink flowers
had managed
to bloom, despite the harshness
of the soil that reside there

oh, I watch as the sun
as it travels back to the east
where it belongs!

without words, without
that grandiose score
that cues the end of the world
and the start of the apocalypse,
the world still turns and turns,
heedless of a petty heart breaking

Silence.

and the sound is loudest
when it is not heard.