Do you remember the house off Florida
with the toilet in the bathroom
that never worked quite right?
I drive by there sometimes,
looking for the pathway to your door
that was always lost in darkness.
I remember your plaid couch,
smoking inside without cracking the window
and then putting our cigarettes out in pillar candles.
The smoke dancing and disappearing
in the dark
the same way that time does,
the same way that feelings do.
Look, what I'm trying to say is that
these memories of you
unfold themselves like a map
that took me growing up
to understand how to read:
The scary end of your street that I would get lost on
if I made the wrong turn
is a road that I travel daily now,
the carwash that you would meet me behind
to walk me to coffee shops that stayed open all night
became a place I would run through
summer evenings after
moving just around the corner.
The mystery of it all to my teenage mind is
unraveled through spaces
I start to know like the back of my hand.
Just a few weeks ago,
I turned off into the parking lot in Sunset Cliffs
where you used to hold my hand in the back of your car
and I would think
"why doesn't he want more from me?" and now I thought
"thank god that he didn't."