Foul and Fair

You have terrible timing.

First we talk for hours

In the middle of the night

Then you see me

And things are just as we expected.

We dine and talk

And our relationship

We think--

Or I think--

Deepens as it changes.

But no.

Though you wooed me

With conversation and essays,

Poetry and stories...

Though you gave me

No choice 

But to fall for you:

You reject,

Turn from it all.

Call it a fuck up.

And move on.

But still that time

Resonates in me

So much that

All I want is 

For you to change your mind

Back to what you first said.

--8.29.08

It's Not About the Logic

I decend the stairs

To guarantee

I'm not in the elevator

In case he is.

Then I sit

In the courtyard

And watch the elevator

Over the horizon

Of my book.

--8.29.08

Someone Else's Window

I don't know

How many more times

I can shut off my doubts

When they continuously

Are confirmed anyway.

Pessimism loves to prove itself right.

I am only

One of many

And not as lucky

As first thought.

I am living

In the land of plenty

But now I ask

Plenty of what?

--8.29.08

Under the Bridge

There are no foundations.

The ground is barely liquid;

Nothing holds its form or place.

One should not, nay cannot

Hold on to any one last-minute hand to hold.

Images are shattered, impressions of a moment.

Yet when the temptation arrives to run,

Nothing remains to run on

But shattered mirrors, broken faith.

Shards of life that cut the skin, loosen the veins,

And weaken heart's defenses.

--8.26.08

Uptown on the Six

She sits and waits.

Expecting a different response from the same action.

Thoughts fly through her head.

She shuts them off;

Will allow no doubts.

"I am from and for my future,

Not my past."

Waiting no longer,

Listening more and less at once.

Wondering if this conscious shift

Will hurt more in the end.

If blindness is worse.

"The principle of one does not guarantee 

That of the similar but not identical forms."

An upside down world

Allows not for upright impressions

Without some whirling, destructive, uncertain,

 Cacophonous wonders and misconceptions.

--8.26.08

The Dance

I came on tentative but strong

You hesitated but then returned

We began.

Pressed to each other

Moving in heated rhythm

Across the floor, the universe.

Perfectly passionately synchronized

Comfortable, envied

The music and us.

You took a step back

So I took one too

Now we're tangoing two feet apart.

--8.11.08

A Snapshot.

They hadn't talked in a year, but she figured his number was still the same. She pondered the cell phone screen for a few moments until it turned off from idling. She carried her phone in her hand as she walked to a far away field. Then she sat down and called him.

He answered.

'Probably forgot this is my number,' she thought to herself. "Hello?" his now-unfamiliar voice echoed into the phone. "This is because of you," she said.

A gunshot went off through the cellphone static.

In the deafening silence that followed, she said nothing. She had shot the gun into the air - a prop gun from a theatre, shooting a blank. But he didn't know that. She listened.

He said nothing.

And nothing was all she needed to hear. She left the gun in the field where she had been sitting and walked home. She swallowed a bottle of pills and died in her sleep after leaving a note telling her family that she loved them and was very sorry but she had to live for herself, and she didn't want to anymore.

He didn't come to the memorial service. He couldn't face her family. He never knew there was a moment when he could have saved her, if he would have just said something.