Fountain View Cafe

1.

If I consume a decade of your life, it won't be as lonely

a century. I’m certain not one person of the millions

this city offers holds me in their thoughts, now.

It’s cleansing, like photographs boxed in the attic.

I am boxed away in the attic of your heart. My edges

yellowed, my lines softened. One of many responses

that seems truest after such dumbfounded pain.

To be sitting here, wondering where you are now,

feels like something mystical. My meditations flying

all over the world just for the slightest sign of you.

The way you lean over your drink. Cross your legs.

Your habit of sleeping, just so. I first had this thought

when you filled up your boxes and moved out our home.

The aura on inanimate objects, this stigma of things.

2.

I understand we can group ourselves

in one way, apart, and still be at hand.

Believe me, I lay idle the whole day

and condemn myself to being unloved.

When rumors stir that I might see you

if I follow, if I shower and dress and run

to this place or that property, this end.

In that I am a feeling thing, lost treasure,

it allows me to occasionally astonish

even myself. According to any woman

who’s ever revered me, it is because

of possibility, alone. Never have I felt

the prospect of a simpler blossoming

than being beside you, sitting at a table.

3.

Without drinking, without any impairment we used to

breathe love. Then, it was the tedium. Kindling

an imagination for simple things, recovering daily

chores. In this new light, picking you from the airport.

Sitting through traffic. Impossibly late for school.

Window kisses, quick clockwork rides to campus.

Each journey’s direction seemed a devotional thing.

Drifting off together afterward. I love the way I think

you once saw me. The first time at a greasy spoon

we found online, huddled in reviews. It was, that day,

the foul-tempered owner’s birthday. Only we knew.

And you were scared. I went from table to table

organizing a song with strangers. The entire place

sang that morning. You said, I love this side of you.

4.

D says he’s happy his girl doesn’t drink.

He can do his thing, not worry about handling

anyone’s mess. You’d call, 3 AM, slurring.

Throwing shoes across the road. Your friend

screaming, you’re asleep in my backseat.

Why dictate anything to you? You told me intimately

of a guy who’d drink the weekend with friends,

come home to you drunk. I won’t. I want to be

lawbreakers, together. To abide or exclaim

or pervade with you. We continue to be unhappy

in our singular decisions, the ones made

without a sure-footed partner. Let’s collect these

mishaps like pieces of scrap metal art and make

a life. Sharing our corrosion, bearing similar joy.

5.

Mornings it seems right to consider the unspeakable.

Church shouldn’t be held in the afternoon. Because

landmarks around town carried a distinct presence

for you, I allowed those dark spots to enter my mind

as well. Bookstores you hated, whole neighborhoods,

parking lots, restaurants marked by old boyfriends.

And because you wanted to be a regular somewhere

we looked hard to avoid the stigma of certain places.

Your new apartment, that side of town and its stories.

We wanted to be comfortable, wanted a warm seat

at the back of the house and say, bring me my usual.

We wanted to feel indestructible, not always running

from our love haunted memory coming back for us.