This is no homage to Joel who first kissed me at Christmas, who rubbed scented lotion into my skin in the spare bedroom, who read poem after poem when they were about him. This is no homage to him now that I don’t live down the street and don’t care who he meets on a Saturday night full of spiraling spheres and pills on the tongue.

This is no homage to Blair, watching the globe spin and spin while sitting in his chair. He is stuck and he knows it. He once kissed me on the top of a slide. I was twenty and thought he was everything. This is not an homage to who I thought I was with him, nor who I thought he was with me. I do not see any letter arriving from him. I do not remember any recent thought.

This is not an homage to Ian in Liverpool who dazzled me with his accent and real soul. Another unavailable heart, another line I cast off into the ocean, coming up empty. Plane ticket crushed in my back pocket. We held hands on the bus in Dublin and I’ll leave that memory right there.

There’s a time when you know that the car is coming down the road. It is twilight and locusts fill the trees. You wouldn’t think I’d be waiting, but I am. I’m a harvest girl watching the moon. And the moon, my darling, is a pregnant whale swimming home.
It’s been lifetimes that I’ve waited for you.

03/03/2005

Posted on 03/03/2005
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