He caught sight of her
just as she was starting to sink
into the scratched linoleum. It happens all the time.
The quiet ones never learn how to speak up.
Five people is four too many, and heaven looking like
a downstairs suite looking like a crowded bus station
is enough to make them evaporate on sheer force of will.

He had forgotten her name
and the last ten years together,
but he had enough of a heart to push aside
at least a dozen celebratory veterans
to get at her.

Those old-timers don’t fuck around. They’re only going
accept an apology if sincerity can be measured
by a bucket of blood.

It didn’t matter. He reached for her, but it was
way,
way too late. She was gone. Spirit bouncing around
somewhere in the music in the park downtown
and whatever comes up from the ground
when one of those old hotels topples over.

He reached for nothing but the best he could do,
tripped over a couple of small dogs duking it out
and spilled through the window and into
some strange, heartbreaking and ruthlessly mysterious streets.

Foreign characters that looked
even more menacing in neon.
Children running around with grenades
in papier-mâché Halloween masks.
Cowboys battled it out with Chinese gangsters.

He caught some dust in his eyes
and a stray-bullet in the middle of his chest.

All of this
happened
in about two minutes.

He was already forgetting her name
and how they had come to the party together.

She was the first one to notice
that the house was like a city with no second floor.

By the time he woke up in a New York City
hospital, he couldn’t remember a thing about her.

Something about a great kiss
and how absurd it was to think that loved ones
could disappear right in front of you.

Her face, gone,
long gone, gone, gone.

The hospital kept him
under observation for ten years,
and he never learned his doctor’s name.

01/30/2010

Posted on 01/30/2010
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard