I have written about this before. About you.
About you leaving. About you leaving without me.
About you leaving without me and forgetting. About me.
Leaving without me and forgetting me.
I have written this before.

He takes my hand, gives me
a reassuring glance that I don't
feel I need. I need him, and I have
him and I don't need this. This is a waste.
A waste because I don't see him, he is never
here. Here, right now is the desert. The desert,
because it has not rained in an eternity. An eternity,
yes. Yes, it hasn't rained a year. A year, or maybe it just
feels like a year. A year, it could have been. Could have been,
but even if it was and even if it wasn't, I still don't know why he
is wasting it. It doesn't come too much, he knows that. That it doesn't
come as quick as I need it to, as often as I feel it should, as easy as I would
like it to. To come. Come and stay for good, not like this. This, coming, going,
indefinite waiting periods. Periods of no rain and periods of no love and periods
without him and periods with him and periods where my heart beats incessantly and
periods when the rain will not stop striking the pavement-- in floods, I float all my weight
on a dwindling river I call my sweetest home. Home, away from this desert, home a place for good.

Your shoulders, sturdy,
hold me, heavy,
I am groggy but awake.

Push at a rock and hope it will move.
You reap what you sow but I did not
plan for your barren lands,
I hadn't thought of the desert,
I have not been able to dream, I have yet to fall asleep.
Watch me fall into the abyss of my own unconscious,  salvaging dollops of conversations we have not had.

Look at you ramble... uneasy, too afraid to let
a comfortable silence sit between us, too insecure
to share anything but emptiness disguised as words.

I did not believe in the power of company,
and their influence.

Now all I can do is stare inertly at the fallow lands of my nightmares
Only to awake, heaving, still heavy, gesticulating wildly,
reaching for familiarity.

I hate this obstinate reality.

We are friends by habit not love.

I am not scared of you leaving.
I'm scared of you not coming back.
I hold my breath till my lungs feel like they're on fire
when you tell me goodbye.

the hairdresser used the wrong dye
       your boyfriend dumped you for a guy

all you have left is shattered dreams
      camera flash blinds you with its beams

missionaries bring word of an impending doom
    your dog snuck in and broke your fave perfume

trying to grow your hair but you have split ends
        the guy you've been eyeing wants to be just friends

your favorite jeans ripped and you don't have spares
        you would ask for a friend's but nobody cares

you're late to work and you don't know why
      you got scouted to model but you were suddenly too shy

you failed the pop quiz that everybody aced
      you got mistaken for a celebrity and brutally chased

you dropped your wallet jogging around
      you found it empty a week later in the lost and found

you forgot not to and picked a scab
       your favorite uncle's stuck in rehab

your grandmother mistook you for her son
      in reality you're female, and nowhere near fifty-one

you're a penny short but the cashier won't budge
     your mother is still holding that 10-year grudge

what can you do, what can you say?
when all you have is first world problems, today.

distance rolls into the highway
as we vicariously live our lives
rebelling against the speed limit
whose faulted existence was deep-rooted
in restraints that meant well
but were restraints all the same