and absence ate the year

october 21 2010

now, now, it's broken now. all of it, all of us. i am up late again, waiting for a bus. the sky is a worn midnight wash, i mean, that's a real colour. i felt i knew it all along, and now i feel it, painful, hungry again, lonely on the way home from work.

i would like an invitation, would like to stop dreaming about a white shirt i've never seen you wear. would i even go? no, no, no. can't stop dreaming. would like to say, i like your smile. just saying.

no, wait, wait, yes. it's still pretty. would like to ask permission to kiss you outside but i'm too shy. ok, go, i am sure, this is a bad idea. lean. leeeeean.

the man asleep doesn't know when he's missed his stop. is he dreaming of you like i do, no, is he haunted by a ghost, hungry for something real. no. i am tired and i know, i shouldn't kiss you on the mouth, shouldn't accidentally touch your blouse. but, i know. i am hungry for something real. i am cold on the way home from work because it's windy and that's how the world works.

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stephen dunn: "from the start all i wanted to explain was how things go wrong, how the heart's an empty place until it is filled"

i can never say how we got here. how i became me and you became you. how we believed that no one would leave before we were ready, until they did. how i learned that absence can grow or diminish, and nothing is for sure. how absence is easily replaced by another body that makes the same motions, and then it's fine i guess. how absence is actually just nothing over again against the side of your brain, saying there is nothing now where there once was something.

i remember sitting on that bus thinking about jeans, and absence ate the year, and i brushed against your shoulder.

today my body trembled a little bit when i thought of you. that's a whole other beat. it's a whole other hole.