you're been drawing houses on your mattress and your
sheets with the hope it won't be long until it's all the
metaphor we need. and hung about your parents' dresser
was a portrait of the sea and all the months you second-
guessed their love and looked for it in me. lying in the
road with everyone you know wrapped around your wrists,
filling in the holes. the drugs are homeless ghosts
looking for someone to haunt, to be their host puppet
stage to act on. you say, "all i want is some concern or
someone to care for me." you raise your cup, say, "here's
to all the months you never noticed anything." a
blindfold, a hundred knotted ropes, your hands are
forming fists but there's nothing there to hold. filling
up bottles with dirty roof-touched rain and lining them
against the porch's edge and whispering as you say, "if
winter comes before i find someone to cover up this
stain, i'll lie down and cover it myself but never get up
again." now that you're a ghost, you're leaving little
notes taped up to the bricks, these sad and somber poems.
with ribbons of the palest yellow guaze i'll decorate
your dreams. and tie a knot or make a bow across any
broken seams.
