I loved you the moment
you yanked my hair and
spoke commands in
the dark.  

Eight years later,
I slap another band-aid
on my open wounds, 
assessing the
damage
in idiotic surprise.

               Your bed,
                      my grave.

I never saw it coming.

I expressed my fears of living alone,
that in the long summer months
I had a tendency to grow depressed.  

“My god, you’re living all alone?  
Do you own a gun?”  

I knew then that we failed
to speak the same language.

I can point to the moment in exact precision.  I stood on the cold tiled floor, the fire flickering across the room in the daylight.  The first time in my life I built a fire for something other than light in the night, a somewhat archaic act to keep our house warm.  I ringed her in the evening, so I could catch her in the morning.  We spoke the daily ponderings of predicament that had slowly become consistent, yet that day the years-long routine ended.  She broke in to say she knew that somewhere there was a family waiting on me—my own mother giving me the nudge—and they would bring me the love that I deserved. Finally, it was time for me to let go, and seek out what had evaded itself in our own home of two.  That, was the moment, I knew it was time leave.

I haven’t felt you talk out of my
fingers for four good months, now.  
To remember it, I kept the old fingernail
clippings because I knew you’d leave.  
Sitting on the mantle next to the
flickering candles that smell of nothing,
I danced around the room hoping
for some ancient talk to bring you back.  
But you were laid to bed years ago,  
along with the sedentary ailments that 
I shook with the seasons as they passed.
That one winter was the worst of ‘em all,
chewing at the quick hoping it would end.

To think I ever bit down on
you to stunt your growth, 
was like chewing on an ingrown
nail that never festered.

I do so much,
yet I do nothing.
     I love you completely,
     but I don’t love you at all.
I try so hard,
yet I’m done.
    In this moment I’m alive,
    but I’m already dead.

We stayed out until the sun broke at dawn.  The beacon took me out of the haze for the first moment in the night, and I glanced down at my watch to see it was after 5 a.m.  I knew then it was one of those moments that would stick with me my entire life.  Kind of like the memory of a youthful bikini-clad body stretching up towards the sky, looking at the ocean horizon and realizing I had my whole life ahead of me.  A decade later I looked at the monotonous architecture of buildings in front of that same sun, and thinking back toward the beach in mind I can’t really say what I had accomplished other than partying past dawn.  A life so far ahead of me now seemed to be half-past, and even that part was no longer mine to claim.

I’ve tried to manipulate
my thoughts
into
a
line
of
thread
that
can weave
the most colorful story.  

One that you can wrap yourself in
to take shelter from the cold,
protect you from the reality that
beats down upon our skin.  

“Here, put this coat on,
I sewed it myself.”  

You put it on but the arms
are different in length,
the collar missing, and
the filling so bare that the
wind breaks right through
and you shiver as the
last gust sings.  

You look up at me
with watered eyes,
and all I can do is
pray for the weather
to break, so that
I can put away my
needle and thread.

Four months and two days later, yet
progress of only seventy-three pages.  
To think keeping my things would hurt,
when the biggest pain brought was 
that which you stole in pages.  

Gone is the refuge I hid, 
kicked out into this cold, 
barren land of thoughts.  No 
characters to accompany me
on my death march, no
storyline other than our own.

A name is but a word, yet
yours the only word I read.  
Keeping me from my books like
you did, I’ll hold against you well
after the last cover closes,
well after the story ends.

Never mind, I see a certain attorney-by-day, writer-by-night has returned. Mystery solved.

If you didn’t treat everything like a game,
I wouldn’t be forced to wear this face.  
A cold, hard profile, absent of the
soft features that lured you, here.
These eyes that stare right through
your embodiment of inauthenticity. 
This mouth that would
rather shout obscenities, 
than touch your long-lost lips.

I saw your mind doing life’s
planning from across the room.
The steps all falling into place— 
a congruous D after C, 
then E, F, and God knows what.
I packed my bags and you
kissed me at the door—
my eyes wide open,
yours closed shut.
Not until halfway to the
airport did it hit me. 
This was A.

The calm has returned 
and the inspiration exited.  
I’d tell you how well I am,
but I cannot seem to find
the words to articulate it.

The starlings I admired on the snow
covered feeders have lost their spots.  
Spring’s sun has returned and reflects
off of their shiny midnight backs,
and I jolt in a familiar instance 

—I remember I hate them.

I notice my past Jim Harrison posts trending as of late.  Wonder if it has anything to do with Mario Batali’s interview of him in Food & Wine?  Guessing so.  You should check it out, too!  http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/the-hungry-crowd-mario-batali-interviews-jim-harrison