A cross-section micrograph
of a nerve cell
looks like a distant photograph
of the surface
of the moon
with craters dug deep into its body
and it makes me feel closer to you.
Like in the evening,
when I dream of the woman you love now
and her dark red hair
as it falls softly across her face
and your heavy hands
as they lift up slowly
to move it all away.
Like the way that
you used to touch me
as if every moment
was carefully thought out
but you have forgotten me
and I have forgotten how
to feel the warmth of the morning
as it stretches up east
over the mountains
to meet the sky—
Half-way through a hallway
there is an image
of you and of I
kneeling beneath a tree
in back of my mother’s old house
when we used to try so hard
to reach the bottom,
we would try so hard
to find any way out.
AND WHEN I FINALLY LEFT YOU,
I felt everything
escape me
as if it were all a river
running into an ocean
and I tried so hard
I tried so hard
to stop it,
but there were no windows
no doors
no seams
that you had left open.
But I can still hear
the sound of your laughter,
the punctuated noise
of your gait.
I AM STILL HAUNTED by
all of the things I have given you
by all of the love that it would take
to find my way back there
into that small selfish place
where I keep you breathing
along with all of the other desolate
parts of myself—
the parts that
were always the ones
that were worth
leaving.