Her:
“I wrote him a letter
That he never got to read”

Me:
“Well maybe
That's a conversation
You now need to have
With yourself”

To move on
Maybe all
We have to do
Is move
Ourselves

It feels almost
Like nothing happened-
But maybe something did
And maybe
Instead of popping
We're still just exhaling
And that bubble
Is still getting bigger

After my first bubble
Of the evening
Popped,
I entered a new bubble-
One of the countless bubbles
Within the bubble
Of my person.

And, in this bubble,
I was alone
And sitting in the same chair
As before,
Even though the other people
Of the back room
Had melted,
Like the walls were then,
Away from me.

I pondered the bubble
Of my person
And its interactions
With the bubbles
Of everybody else

And I thought
Of my bubble
As threatened
With either merging entirely
With another
Or popping.

I sit in the soil
With a ***** driver,
Too coated in Earth
To ever fix
Anything again,
And I eat a carrot
Taken from the ground
While, like Adam,
Only with modern
Conveniences-
Like ***** drivers-
I wonder about
What would’ve been
If Eve had just
Liked carrots
And not apples

I saw your brother today,
And your mother too-
Your brother waved
And your mother
Pretended she didn't see

I wanted
To get out of my car
And hug them both

But after a little wave
Of my own,
Followed by a sad smile,
I drove away,
I turned up the volume,
And drowned my thoughts
With the kind of music
You would call
White noise

Through the store window
Of time
I watch you
Buying my first books

“I actually knew the author”
Enthusiastic.
“That's nice”
Waiting for her shift to end.
“I loved him”
“That'll be twelve, fourteen”
“He loved me.”

Author distributed
Or self published
Or non-existent
I can count
On at least
One reader

And I walk away
From that store window
And go on another walk.
Your use of the past tense
Had begun
To bother me

I almost kissed you
When I saw you
Yesterday
But then my left-over high
Left me
And I remembered
What I most feared-
So I pulled my chapped lips
Away from yours
And rolled over
In the bed of my mind,
Terrified
That I might one day
Unlearn
All the songs
I'd come to know
By heart