My best thoughts come before the thing,
like *******, love, and therapy.
Driving there, a perfect day,
God got a little lazy,
Ctrl + P’d the clouds
all the way to Kansas City.

My therapist liked your poem better.
She didn’t say that,
but I gathered as much,
when she said you became real to her—
isn’t that the same?

The spaces make the same word
different. That final sway,
like two people
hurling away
from one another.

In the end, she couldn’t hate you,
you were real now.
I thought:
you’re not allowed to hate her anyway,
so watch your mouth.

But I said nothing, and
we listened to a song.