i go into your empty room
and your closet door is open
when it is never open
and i can still feel you in here,
how you can contain a space one second
and be walking down the stairs holding everything you own the other--
it is tremendous in its hollow.

there is a little shelf for shoes
in the bottom of your closet
that i have never noticed before.
i sit down and i can't take it all of a sudden,
how you are gone now.
i gulp a cup of hot coffee to suffocate
this swell of loss in a hot swallow.

we are in some kind of love
that is uncontrollable and strange.
i'm afraid of you.

i leave to try and smother your absence,
because if i'm not at home,
next to your open door and barren walls
i don't have to think of you.

but of course,
i do think of you.
i talk about you and everyone is glad
that i have found someone.
but i bite my lip so hard
that it bleeds and i have to excuse myself
to clean it up.

i draw you a picture of a wolf
because it is funny and
unsentimental.
like you.

i want to write subliminal messages all over it,
in his fur:
"i'm sorry i am crazy"
"i wish your mom didn't hate me"
"can we spoon again?"

but when i give it to you as is,
i know that you get it.

i stay in your closet for a long time,
thinking about what it will be like here now.
wondering how you'll sleep tonight.

and thursday seems very far away.

06/29/2009

Posted on 06/29/2009
Copyright © 2024 Lauren Singer