That I always saw you in a white studio apartment
In the big city with its slanted houses surrounded
By the crooked, recycled fences;
That walls as big as mirrors can make your shivering
Thighs come off like sophisticated weaponry, or
That I had been on drugs when I begged you.

Did you know that the square root of any number
Is less real than what we saw on the television, or
That I believed in numbers and you taught me
Where the alphabets could never agree upon anything, or

That I’m not writing this for you. I can assure that you are
Dead and gone, the way hearing Snow Patrol for the first time
Can never be revisited.

Did you know that my drapes still moved like your body
Danced ruefully beneath them, like a ghost in the machine
Or a ghost machine, or a breeze, perhaps a spot of indigestion.
Did you know that I could never let that specter go, or
That I have now.