Despite your resignation and sudden departure,
shooting in the direction of Not Me as soon as my lips parted
and those fateful words escaped,

you never left.

The refuge of cool bedsheets in bedclothes on a bed too big for me
houses nightmares and a silent love affair,
neither tangible nor real,
but when the sun peers through the curtains and my REM becomes
remember, I do it; I sit up, kick back damp bedsheets and bedclothes
and let my feet dangle from the heights.

A cantaloupe, a fragrant pollen drenched lilly, ginger beer,
these are my companions in a desolate Whole Foods.
I stroke, smell, drink, relive the ecstasy of my own reveries,
the ones I created before I lay eyes on you,
before, when your name was merely a source of laughter,
like some fat obnoxious cartoon on television,
lovable and detestable in one viewing.

I walk to my car and turn the ignition-- that makes my fetal position
in fifteen minutes
significantly more realistic.

Somewhere between the interstate and the inter state of my mind,
the threads unravel and dissolve,
and the knot that stated not, no, never,
says yes, you **** well can, now, and always.