We stayed in one of the most beautiful,
elaborate abandoned dream houses for miles,
and it was wonderful every time the rain from 6 AM
kept up its sick game on through the afternoon.

It made us lazy. It drowned out whichever one of us
was more nervous at any given moment.

You dragged me to the skyway,
and we could have raised a family in the time
it took that elevator to get us up to the agreeable,
accessible heavens.

We tried our best,
and it’s funny to nobody else
that when the doors opened,
we adjusted our clothes anyway.

No one was there,
no one was watching us,
but we both knew better than to leave
our thoughts and movements
up to everything we could plainly see.

We talked about staying through the winter,
but I guess we missed dodging mail trucks,
brawling crowds of super heroes stripped down
to their underwear,
and belligerent saxophones trying to bring
the 1940’s back to this science fiction reality run amok.

And I guess I shouldn’t have disappeared for three days.
I suppose I should have assumed you would notice.

Things came up.
I got lost in a glass jar about the size of my thumb.

Sorry.
I’m not very good at wishing I could take things back.

It stands up nicely and painfully to zero-sum reason
that we are going to find a way to perform
the small miracle of holding each other anytime soon.

That’s not okay.
You made me happy to memorize new, awful love songs.
I guess it will have to be okay eventually.

But it would be nice to bum a smoke from you
in the middle of the night. One more time? Twenty more times?
Forget I said anything. Sorry.

Went back to the abandoned house
the other day. The sky was filled with birds
playing the lava game with the ground. The ground was filled
with old motor homes and poised Cadillacs.

How in the hell did they build so many
new four-story tombs?

Who in the hell even dreams of that kind of thing?

Can you tell me in person sometime?
No. Sorry.

I went with a bunch of new age knuckleheads,
and we planned for the immediate future
as though none of us had police records.

It wasn’t the same.

06/24/2013

Posted on 06/24/2013
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