Your silence gave me one good breath, as it always had—
permission to move about the world in darkness, to bump around
and disrupt the waver of night. Two freshmen ran past,
the first one flailing a red lace brassiere, the second one howling
for mercy, discretion, shouting Give It Back—It’s Mine.

Watch what you eat, you told me. Life is about taking
care of your self, putting good things in, taking bad
things out. On my way to you, my ride chugged Fresca
and Tab, chain-smoked Chesterfields. She swore like the world
was her burden, then dropped me off, the end to an improvised blues.

When the night is still, things get caught in the corners. Like fake
tokens in a subway turnstile. Like a woman with a man heavy on her
mind. I had a plan: the next day, we would discuss forgiveness, how to
sing off-notes, still hear the fugue. The world fades—on you, on me,
a street apart. One of us always leaving, one of us always left behind.
 

Some people were not meant
to create holes in themselves.

Were not meant to carry around
the weight of void, and fill it

with something foreign, some thing
to replace the phantom craved—

an unreachable itch a mile beneath the skin.
But some try still, in the name of intricacies.

We all search for precious things, a music
pure enough to mimic the neck’s curve.

A golden hoop. A glittering dangle. A simple post.
Even a vacancy speaks of the last

or the next—the ethereal what
that could be there—instead of this

dense phoenix, healing
and healing again.