I still expect you to…
to do what? I don’t know.
You know where my house is,
have it mapped out somewhere in the folds
of your ever-clicking mind. I want
you to drive up here
and save me, do something… anything.
I’ll leave it generalized like that, open,
gaping even. Like the space in between
the brown jutting earth and the black
contorting universe. We were in The Dalles
that day when we noticed the sky, noticed
how it bucked in desire for precision and
details. I won’t ask anything of you,
demand that you come over, wrap something
around my eyes and gently lead me away
from the fire. I expect you to
though. Perhaps because when we stooped
under the weight of being only fifteen years old
you made those thin gauze promises
and I wound them into balls and saved them
for when I really got hurt. Can you call this hurt?
I could think of many
different names, each one obscure and pointing…
they want me to call it hurt.
And so I do reach out to you, I
try touching you with frozen fingers, even though
I know we’re long past the age of touching,
into and out of the era of hitting… what are we
wallowing in now? It’s something
separate
something soft and pliable,
perhaps spattered with picked-through memories,
only the good ones though, this isn’t
a time period for sadness or anger.
You and I… we could come up with memories
full of those things, but we choose not to anymore.
You’re on your way out, and I’m
just starting on that road. Perhaps
it’s because of this, the fact that you’re about to take
the final bow in the play of my life,
that I cry for you now. All alone
upon my wooden floor? Preposterous!
And yet it’s happening. So I finger you,
my parched flesh swollen with expectations,
and you know from experience that the best thing
to do for me, is to wrap me up with some
more gauze.