A rusted spoon on the windowsill,
coffee ring stamped into cheap linoleum.
You hollow out the morning with your hands,
counting cracks in the pavement like prayers.
I never wanted the altar you made of me,
a bent spoon, a crumpled shirt, a late rent notice.
You press my name to the inside of your lip,
taste of pennies and burned toast, and call it faith.
When I leave the house stays small and cold,
the radiator clicking Morse about how you failed.
Your eyes become coin slots~only quarters fit,
only the exact change for another minute of me.
You sleep with my jacket on the floor,
its zipper still holding the shape of my breath.
Dried flowers in a jar on the dresser~petals like ash~
you water them with cigarette smoke and promises.
At three a.m. you whisper my address to the dark,
map the route by broken porchlights and one working stoplamp.
A bus sighs by; a dog barks and then forgets.
You trade your teeth for another swallow of me.
You barter trust for a paper bag, a folded bill,
your father’s watch, a photograph with the face cut out.
When the fix arrives it’s clinical~cold metal, a light~
and you flinch, surprised that salvation tastes like copper.
Later, you sit with your palms full of lint
and call it worship. I am the sermon you cannot keep,
and you kneel on a kitchen floor that remembers rain
and smells like old milk and the sound of the phone you never answer.
You call me love.
I answer in the echo of a slammed door,
in the way the curtains never learn to hang straight again,
in the slow, patient theft of everything you were.
Just a metaphor. But