Call me.

You called yesterday while I was sleeping.
My phone picked up your words
and stored them in its belly.
When I finally dug them up, they were stale
already
and the warmth of your breath had faded
from their core and
left them cold.

If I could hold your words in my palms
and rest your voice against my skin
I'd drink you in through the thin
plastic film that's holding in
my soul within
my body.

I cannot sleep because I keep
wondering if you'd called
and gotten lost
in the silence
of my dreams.

Sometimes I press your whispers into my ear
and rewind the "dears" and sincere
slips of tongue.

Every now and then I'll forget to breathe
and only remember when my feet
turn slightly blue
from being pinned beneath
the weight of the wait
for you.

This time, I'll be there when you call.
I'll wrap every word in festive paper
and seal the vapor of your breath
in crystal bubbles,
condense the syllables
into a bauble
and wear your voice around my neck
and never sleep again.

Fragments

I dug a grave and finally gave our past the rest
that it had craved and I took
the ashes of our passion and dissolved them in a tidal wave and I
swept up the dust of our former lust and mopped up the mess
that we had made but
there's still a shard, I think, of what
we tried so hard to save and when I walk
I can feel fragments crunch beneath my heels, remnants
of what once was good and should
have lasted but
just couldn't.

Staying up

One summer night I stayed up wishing.
One April night I cried.
One day in May I chose to pray,
And one winter night,
I lied.

One day I saw you walk away,
and I lay in bed and watched. I thought that if I
stayed and slept,
I could forget that you had left.
I wanted you to turn and sigh--to wait for me to say goodbye but
you didn't wait.
You took what we had crafted and you trashed it without
upset or regret or worry that the threads would
reach out and connect
you to me.  

So one summer night I stayed up wishing
that I'd stopped you.
One April night I cried.
One day in May I chose to pray
for everything I didn't say.
And one winter night
I lied and made
myself believe that
you had stayed.

Wall

The pavement's cold and it's raining
It's a storm.
There's paint peeling off the walls and the ceiling
Layers of acrylic, yielding
Conceding after concealing, year after year
All the stains and the smears,
The badly done veneer
The lines of graffiti that keep repeating
The cracks in the concrete that keep receding
every summer but come grinning back in the winter months
Taunting and leering,
asking for that one coat of paint that would
eliminate the taint
of a poor man's inability
to fix his living space.
There's a lady in the house, and a baby.
The baby's catatonic and the lady
alcoholic
and
The poor man works through the nights and the mornings
just to eat.
"I'm home, honey," he says, full well knowing
That his wife's passed out by the couch.
No one greets him when he calls, no one answers but the walls.
Look! There's the spot that the coffee stained when the saucer went flying
And the crack where the clay mug shattered
And oh! That was where the month's money went,
Into the dents in the doors and cement
And there's the scar at the heart
of the art
that he bought for his dear
at the start of their marriage career
But
All she'd wanted was a beer.
So wouldn't it be queer
To erase
all the memories that his place
Had collected through the days
Like pieces meant to grace
the empty space that became
a collage of his fate?
After all, the only answer that he got when he called
Was from the peeling paint on the wall.

The book.

So yesterday I finished writing our book

and I wanted so desperately to

finish

and so achingly to not.

It was raining yesterday while I was writing,

and there were tears on the window pane.

I couldn't tell if I was hurting, or if the hurt

was alive and its own

maybe I was the parasite

and the feeling was the being

maybe I was feeding off the feeling--

--maybe I was leeching--

just to feel alive.

There was no way to un-write our story.
I was almost at the ending.

It wasn't even sad, wasn't wrenching...

The skies had cried for nothing

--their tears unquenching--

The rain was wasted on the window pane

--there were never any tears to hide.

It was so exciting, wasn't it,

the writing?

I wanted so desperately to finish it

that I never stopped to read.

And then, suddenly, it was over.
There were no more pages to turn,

no more letters. I searched frantically for an empty page

--a space.

There's still ink in my pen, I mumbled, blubbering.

There's still more story to write.

But all the pages were gone. I'd filled them all.

I sighed heavily and set down my pen.

I let the ink dry while my eyes got wet

I let my muse die with the dreams I laid dead.

I finished our book--filled it so tight with words

that the pages ran black.

I'd packed in our story with smiles as a filler

and now that it's done I guess

I'll read it

again and again

and forget

that it had to end.

Letters

For a while I didn't know how to read

our book

and the letters on the pages were just

scratches of ink

but even then, I think, the markings linked

in even patterns, given patterns

and today, I know the letters are more

than just letters

they're letters from the grave

and the brave

and the scarred and

the scared.

Snow globe

I want to keep you in a glass-globe prison

and wrap up our memories in foil

and stick them in an oven.

I want them to cook and bake and boil

inside the tin sheets till the juices and the oils

evaporate

like rum in a plum cake

and all that's left is over-baked

memories dry

and desolate.

But you. You I want in a snow globe.

I want to shake up your world

every time I miss you

and smile whenever the fake snowflakes

kiss you

I want...I want to be in there with you,

frozen forever in porcelain perfection

hanging on by my fingertips

and I want...

I want to be the fake snowflakes on your lips.