I’ve already forgotten
your beat-up fingers,
your peppercorns,
the ice in your eye
the way that you move
like a warning,
I think.
Anyway. It was that time
against the backdrop of trees
the russet sky,
the houses built like half promises on rocks
when I started to get wise.
There was drama
going on, inland. A thin sliver of moon
wet oil on the ground,
white flowers in June.
Your phone rang. You looked at it
and then at me. There was a shadow around
your head. I felt the thing we try not to feel.
It is a difficult time
for loving. Apparently, anything goes.
No one is allowed to dissolve
in public. We rent each other’s beds
for weeks and weeks and weeks
with nothing to show for it at the very end
but dirt underneath our nails.
I am still gasping, even today
for one I treated poorly.
They told me they
wished me
all the best
in the softest, most devastating way.
modern romance