The days stack up like
dirty plates, countertop tower
unwieldy, keep my hands gentle
or face the tumbling crash,
so many of my poems about
you were about broken glass,
an omen I willfully ignored,
and I still can’t get the taste
out of my mouth –
There are spots in the city I
still find it hard to breathe,
there on 14th Street, where
you yelled at me until I broke,
the story that traveled the
world, Michael lost
his cool, down the subway
steps, where you told me
in a voice I can’t unhear
I am impossible to love.
Old wounds have a way of aching
with the weather, some
glasses spilling shards only
flesh can find, you
transparent, fragile thing,
but I’ll tell you, I know it:
I know my love is a sun
breaking through the
cloud cover, watched it
warm you to the bone,
keep you company and starve
your constant loneliness, I know
you ache for it, and
can’t bring myself
to light even a corner of
the rooms you run to,
drug-numbed and desperate.
I’d say it’s all love, but
it isn’t, it wasn’t, so I
play sweet music at the
kitchen sink, hum along as
I rinse old things free,
toss away the splinters that
make themselves known, and
close my eyes, let myself
conjure your face, the one you
made in those rare moments I
had you, and wish you
someone possible.
michael king 