Weight

I feel the weight of loving you often enough

to want to grow wings. 

My memory is the main culprit, 

and it strikes without fair warning.

Yesterday, it was the night you moved your leg

to the center underneath the booth, all sly, 

like I wouldn’t notice you’d made it impossible 

for us not to touch, and how you held my gaze 

when our ankles kissed.

Today, it was definitely the way you pecked my cheek

before you ran to catch the train, 

glanced into my eyes and dashed across the street.

I hadn’t even thought you would kiss me goodbye.

Right now, it’s 5 am, and I know I can call someone

and he will answer, and I’ll tell him I’m feeling lonely,

and he will ask me what kind of lonely I’m feeling.

And I’ll want to tell him - the kind of lonely that exists as 

a cannonball in my stomach, rolling about each time I move.

The kind of lonely that can blast an gaping hole through the core of me,

the kind of lonely that’s the round black heaviness of your absence.

But I’ll just say what’s true enough without the honesty;

-oh, that sort of late-night lonely after a long day

when I just want a body beside me so listening to
the sound of their breathing feels like falling
asleep in a car, rushing me forward into 

places I won’t remember when I wake up.

poem - April 2012