Sometimes in fleeting moments,
Usually after you’d been drinking,
And often during those quiet, dark nights
When we’d lye in bed together,
Hands tracing only absence
On one another’s skin,
You’d look at me in this sort of
Fantastical way.

For me, it was always sort of like
Looking out at the ocean
And thinking for a second that you’re seeing
Infinite blue,
Though it’s really just the color of the sky
Reflected.

Even then, in those transient instants
Of eyes meeting for a second too long,
I’d sometimes think just that I’d miss you
As the subject of my poems.

Then the ice storm came.

The slickness of the roads kept me from you
Days before the storm and days after it,
Such that the sharpie and permanence,
With which I once marked the potential for our love,
Is faded now too.

My heart is a million different places, pieces;
A million different people,
Subdivided like America
To its breaking point.

But I brought my pen in from the car today
And the ink is thawing now
Despite the fact that the next love poem it writes
Will be for someone else
(Which is okay-
I think I’m okay.)