i've wanted to send you a poem
not one that I have written
that would sit in your gut
and remind you that what
i want is to be bitten.

heat from you is still on me

choose your absence
but pull me along---
I am muddled.

you'll toss 'you're _'
to me
and I will file it away
for the times when you are.

heat from you is still on me

you'll slip beneath me
and I will dissolve:
particled up and neutral.

mother moves
always wearing:
white linen, a skirt
carrying children with electric hair

if I hadn't stopped to say hello
I'd think her phantasmagoric
and if she hadn't turned the faucet on
I'd think I invented her
floating thin, dutiful.

I'm a casual hinderance
at times welcome
curve of my thigh:
a negotiating chip.

You're the receptacle
for my childless spiral
token I'm saving:
a bad habit.

you're probably with your family today
I think you had a baby a week ago
I can see you  
grilling and face-tired.

it's a different life
we don't talk about
never routines or
the mundane
why do you need to?

I am not real
and you may not love me
like I've woven mine for you.

we owe each other nothing,  
have our softness to lose
you, with your life on a scroll
the way you need it to.

I will never be a factor
not a friend at a party
not your kid's teacher
not someone from church
not across the street

you will wake up every day
aged and flat.
and I will wake up
and breathe.

I won't die until you will
after all, you woke me up from a death
and have been killing me for years, so--

when my soul detaches it will find you
to whatever is next
mundane soul retirees

or

if yours careens intergalactic
you can bet mine will be right there
in final solidarity, never minding the beauty
swirling in milky stars.

we didn’t wreck, no
did not even bump---  
so why are little parts of your skull,
fractured and eternal,
inside mine?  

It happened in a second
At 85 miles per hour  
you hear it on the news all the time.

I’ll hoard all these tiny moments
and force them into meaning
til you are in oblivion,
addled and blind.