Her $50 hair carouseled about her head
As she turned to mouth me the answer before walking through the screen door.
Her collarbone showed, shouldering through the 5-year linen blouse
She’d bought from an upscale consignment store the same morning she bought
Her second car for less than her parents spent on shoes.

Before I’d seen the sea, I pictured space;
Stars and Galaxies and Ice and Infinite, bigger than I would be and gold,
Hot orange. And quicksilver and crimson. Too white to know, too bright to see.
I dreamt of eyes, thousands. And voices and outstretched, glittered, sweaty fingers
And swirling, sweeping spirits and sad songs about love.

“Please, I need this.” “I need you, please.”
I pictured golden, heavy hands with wine and French cheeses. And clawed, chalky bathtubs
Of marble veined grey, windows bigger than their walls and shiny cherry wood and leather.
I pictured her lips parting and eyes dewy as I drifted to the door because they needed me
And I couldn’t stay any longer, I’d already stayed too long, and they needed me.

Everyone else had tried so there were none left.
I was the last, so I was the first. The moon and its stars were blinking open their eyes as my fingertips
Left her waist and I backstepped into their world that couldn’t do without me.
I could have been a martyr, clipped my locks after God gave me all he could and all the rest.
I would have been a martyr, but my blood started to burn and the flames licked my legs.

Her gentle push tugged at the nails holding the mesh to the screen door as it creaked
Open to faded wood and gravel and patches of green grass and golden sunset-light.
I hadn’t heard but I’d known the answer as she walked outside. My hands were lighter
Than the grains I’d used to make her dinner, and I found strands of her hair on a 3-year t-shirt
I’d never wanted to throw out after I wore it in my first car, a rental I bought wholesale.

Sad songs about love babbled and murmured on the Crosley she found for us during
The Christmas my cousins slept on our couch and floor. The sink poured, dribbled,
Stopped, and the sliding bottle of oil ground across the countertop.  Through the door I could
See Tall Metal Skyscrapers and Helicopters. But before the moon and all its stars
Could take my eyes for their own, she found her voice and used it:

“Did you find a path to the stars?” She asked.
“I never did,” I said. “If I think to, maybe I’ll look again tomorrow.”

Gin soaked parchment paper, robbed of  words
wrung red from split fingernails guiding,
sliding back and fro
to the irrhythm of distended lobes misfiring  
a useless tome, of uninteresting characters
and the sun that burns them crisp, their lips tiring
cigarettes in the candy dish
the southerners, wrenching wrists about their red clay alleys,
the tinted beer glass stashing tobacco juice  
their words playing loose with the sanctimony of animals, raccoon paws
and muskodine snaps and the rusting 1953 Crosley metal lawn chair
rocking away the synapse.

i should be thinking of him
not you.

i guess i must still miss you because
i am sleeping with my head where my feet usually are,
and i don't do that unless my depression is acting up.

i was a one-track mind
with nothing but you
going round and round
on my baby blue crosley.

but you always had everything else
that wasn't me on your mind.

even now you're still a
rare breath of fresh air

"i'm usually good with parents,
except when they hate me.
but i can't blame them
because i wouldn't date me"

and i still talk to you
but your pale blue eyes
don't make up for your
stone cold heart

and i can't help but wonder if
i helped make it that way.

i didn't know it was possible to
miss someone
even though they're right next to you.

i wanted to be your
17th & last
and after all we've done
they can call it what they want,
but i will never be able to rewrite the past.

you were my reputation
from the beginning
middle
and end.

maybe i am
more fun to miss than to be with?

there are things i didn't get to say to you,
things i will never say now
because i can't
i shouldn't
but also because i no longer want to...

we were always better at talking with our eyes
anyway...we were fluent in silence.

the way a mere graze could set our souls afire
but we have to put that away now.

i want you to try...
i want you to try...

try to get better
try to move on
try to forgive me
try to remember
try to allow love in
try to feel & feel it deeply,
don't hold it back...
try to just say things,
because the other person
may be dying
to hear your words...

and i will try
to make sense of this
unfinished business.

she's here again.
loud, loud enough that
i cannot hear the woman tumbling
from my '98 Crosley,
that voice like liquid silver.
she's here again.
come to hurt me, bad.
i thought i closed my door.
i thought i closed my door.
leave me alone
i say.
loud, loud enough this
time that maybe she will go.
and i can sit here,
without her hands on my bones.
and i can sit here with the cat,
who is soft, and silent.
and i might be able to hear
that voice that cracks like lightning.
i thought i closed my door.
i thought i closed my door.
help me.
break out of this glass prison
where there is hardly room to breath
only to see in.