i've been spending the past
two nights
away from home.
it's hard to explain why i did;
you'd have found me sitting
on the beach at two
a.m. ; two bottles of jack beside
my lonely bones.

i think i was back again,
searching for something
i lost long ago.
i think it left the same time you did.
i've been smoking too much too,
wisps of gray plumes
fleeing those smooth white marlboros.

i swear too much.
i cut myself on a bottle cap
and threw it out into the sea.

i'm a wanderer.
i can see why you left.
but the smoke and the alcohol,
they're my substitutes for you.
i drink so much that
i don't even get drunk anymore.

it's just me
and a ghost of a soul
where you used to be.