THERE WAS A NIGHT...

dark and forgettable,

that's how it was
when i slept on your front porch
after the fact, far after the world ended.

then walked
away, still drunk
before you rose:
before you woke.

to this day, never noticed.

that was the night
that hindsight caught up with me.

an idea of you being perfect,

as if there were such a thing.

and how out of love i'd fallen with myself thinking in such ways; i was

further gone than i imagined.

and of course, no one told me, not a friend in sight.  not just even one
pointing me in one direction or another

and i wondered
how i got to that point.

i'm smart, and charming, and hidden well, and so on...

and so

the fact that you lived on the same street as me
didn't make up for the
perfect; fucking cliche metaphor
of the pedestal
i'd conjured up in my mind.

(a place to place you.)

those things didn't happen, nor exist.  why would they?  why
would the universe ever tap you on the shoulder, whisper in your ear; and

then be wrong.
except perhaps he wasn't,  and maybe  never could be.

yet still i divide...
directly in two:  part one

hopes i get a piece of me in the deal,

standing if front of the mail box
waiting for the letter,

"save the date",

the other part existing somewhere else,
another beast all together

a hair extracting skeptical, knees bleeding across the floor, heart: well...
giving all it's got,

not for even one second, "holding it's peace".

not one of which,

are of,
nor ever will be

any of these far worse images conjured up:

an elephant scared of a mouse.
shingles falling on a roofers head,
the same shingles licked slowly across one's tongue,
a different (and of course; somehow better) man fucking you.
the smell of pavement

as it gradually turns a hard, your nose first

experiences, the scent then
up in disgust, and soon high
from the fumes.  high enough to entreat the texture
of the shark as the remora
bites down.

a grain of sand
might as well be the pyramids of giza
when you want something bad enough.