New Mexico is no place for you.
Sage brush and canyon dust
suffocate you. In your email, you wrote
that moonlight haunts you; there is no escape
from the pale light filling your eyes.

The moonlight never reaches far, here at night;
neon ads compete with the computer’s glow.
I imagine you at your computer, coping,
in your usual way, image after image after image;
jerking off to those faceless tanned bodies
whose arms cannot reach out for you.

I remember you would take me
on camping trips during the rainy season
just to lie in my arms in the tent.

(Did you sleep as confidently in his arms,
wishing you could fixate yourself there?)

My sheets still smell of you,
discolored from your face creams,
and I dream of your soft face,
far below, cast in the red neon,
looking up for my apartment window:
a face not of a foolish boy,
not of a coward,
not of an ex-lover.

11/19/2006

Posted on 07/15/2009
Copyright © 2026 S. Pelham Flood