There's a better version of me,
    up, ahead. And
        he loves you in ways,
        I can't figure ways,
how-to. Yeah,
you cried when he
left you.

And lonely,
    you screamed.
"But if he'd come back, then,"
you think,
you'd believe it? The
            roads don't just sparkle, every
            time that you need it.

            In the poem I write next,
    we're both losing games.
I press up then, catch on,
turning to flames.
                In a grand winning gesture
you burst
into diamonds,
                before I can remind you
                about asking Simon.

    In the distance, outside the door to your
    basement, a crowd la-las the
    Star-Spangled Banner.
From the bulkhead and foundation,
from "the Hobbit door," but,
behind me,
the Anthem goes silent.
                            "Not home. Headed home. Stopped
here. On-my-way."

"Where would you rather be,
                                            than right here, right now?"
Ralph Wilson died a rich man,
with a football stadium
by which to remember him.
            "Well then trace your
depression to its sources."
                        I'm afraid I'll never own the franchise.

There's a father, presiding
over a service,
                for both of us. It's the
same priest, at every
                    front of the room.
                        Our parents are crying, regardless.

                        I'd say somewhere, we sit,
together,
            sipping on the universe. This one
                                                    or another.
        If we don't, then they do.
And they're having the best time.

        But in our past,
        the same one we share now,
        a version of you stiffens.
She glazes her eyes, sugary.
Holds out her palm, fingers to the sky.
And he matches her thumb first,
before the four digits.
                                    Her face bursts, all rosy.
His turns away.