by the verdict
those twelve came back in ten minutes
guilty on all counts they said
I fell down
all I did was act like a dog one day of my life
it was playful barking on all fours at her heels
chasing her naked with that leash around my neck
through the park
until she jumped in the lake
I thought she was playfully flailing
acting
like she couldn't swim
and as I couldn't swim with
this leash and ball in my mouth and the chain dragging
hell
I thought the pond was shallow
it was
the pond of jurors consisted
of her three nieces an uncle
two close friends
of hers
and a classmate in high school
I was ******
until they found her in Tijuanna three years later tricking
on Ice and burritos
they let me go that October without
any apology

stupid as the moth
I drew my wings in dive-bombed her light
flicker
head-on
the best sizzle for a minute part of a second
before the
burn

a one night sweetheart she surrounded me
I plunged the depths of one night's love
grasped about in my hands
all I could in such a short time
her soft *** in both hands
her neck kissed her mouth taken
for all I could and she did
and we said goodbye at 5 am
never to see each other
again
but in my dreams
her name
was

a hard step here a  hole to the right
been searching trailing her
for days
she escaped my sight two
drunk days ago I got up
today and she was gone
I been walking a thousand miles
since
saying I don't give a **** about you
lying
like hell to myself

It was your name I fell for first.
An instant name crush when I saw it –
two names I’d never have considered putting together,
but how beautiful, how unexpected.

Of course I fell for you name first.
Names are so much easier to fall for:
all the possibility in Florence, its softness, its grandness,
all the temptation in the way Delilah slips off the tongue;
the potential for a story about a girl named Ilaria Winter.

-

I fell for your style next, then your hair,
then the way you introduced yourself with both names
and then the way you spoke in class.

I think I stared at you too often, and I’m sorry.
I didn’t think I was being obvious, and I hardly thought
you would notice (someone as boring as) me.

But you must have, and I’m sorry.
I’m sorry you talked to me for the first time at the station,
when the train was fourteen minutes late, the moon looked
strange in the sky and I was contemplating jumping onto the tracks.
I’m so sorry you spoke to me at the train station of all places.

Yes, train stations have so much potential for beginnings,
but it’s far more likely they’ll be about endings,
about the fleeting, the slipping, the moments of going separate ways,
the longing for home and the crying into books kind of moments.

-

(But thank you, thank you anyway, for talking to me and knowing my name
and complimenting my hair and my boots and my clothes.
I wish I could have told you I loved the way
the bow in your hair matched your heels but I couldn’t and I’m sorry)

-

How disappointing it is to open something and find nothing in it,
because that’s me and I’m so sorry.
Don’t judge a book by its cover, I guess, because I’ve had to be creative
with my front to conceal the dreary words of my pages.

(And maybe – most definitely – I’m reading too much into this anyway,
but I’m boring and nothing much happens in my boring life (because
I don’t let it and I’m sorry.))

-

But thank for trying (and I’m sorry, so sorry).

-

I just wish you wrote poetry because at least then I could attempt to compliment that.

(and maybe you do write poetry, but I guess I’ll never know, will I?)

(I’m sorry.)