your new beau sleeps
on the left side of the bed
and he has a smile like mercury, like moonlight:
it spills over you like a melody you just remembered
your mother used to sing when you were sleeping.

your new beau sings
(sometimes loudly, in the shower)
and he showers you with love like summer rain:
warm and soft and charming, like a teddy bear you find
that still smiles, buoyed by ghosts of your affection.

your new beau lights
cigarettes, your heart, the room
with the careless chaos-grace of a tornado:
sleek and bold and brilliant, so natural yet so strange
that you can't ever really catch your breath around him.

but there's another reason why
he will remind you of a storm
and there's a reason his bedside is the left;
he left me, he always leaves, and someday he'll leave you too
as the moon sets, the rain stops, the storm rests.

he'll leave you unmoored, and adrift, and confused
a ghost ship, alone in the blue,

he'll appear in your daydreams like the quickening wind
that asks of your sails: "where to?"