You are an unfinished poem
As a matter of urgency
I force myself to slide you
into some distant drawer of memory.
I put you there,
my unfinished poem.
I do not want to write you:
the images you breathe
and the sound of your voice
alliterative across the second hands,
the stanzas that are divided
by space, separation.
I go on with my days.
There are bills to pay
and my friends tell me
other poems to write.
I make one about a boy
who throws a tantrum
in the middle of the produce section
and runs down to aisle seventeen
where I find him
half turned over his shoulder
to see if I will follow.
He’s just far enough away,
wanting to hide,
yet those eyes across the thick winter scarf
are exposed skeleton bones, frame of a house
glossed over with ice in the moonlight.
He’s frozen there, some part of him
wanting to be found.
Suddenly, I realize it is your poem again.
I sigh and I tell you to leave.
I write a poem about junk shops.
The copper kettle I pick up with my hand
stained and smelling like a thousand pennies.
Practically a poem right there.
Or the Laurel and Hardy tie collection.
Nice enough for a haiku, with the right adjective.
Actually, it’s the mismatched oven mitts that
really do it for me. Blood orange and dirt brown.
One folded atop of the other
as if napping, surrendered to the reality
of not actually being a pair
but content to lie there
hoping someone will pick them anyway.
I don’t want to be the one.
I know the comments I’ll hear
and how utterly ridiculous:
there are perfectly matched pairs two aisles over
next to the candles and tea cups.
Still, I can’t stop staring
at the blood orange and dirt brown.
She’s draped across him, probably telling him
to pass her another slice of pizza
as he says that the basil is just right,
slides his one thumb along hers
which is as far as they’ll go all night
no matter how warm they are in the palms.
No one even cares to look
for the other blood orange and dirt brown.
Especially not them. I decide not to wake the couple,
perfectly soundless and entwined
in the half-light. Of course, this is when you yawn
(as you always do)
toward the end of my poems
and, in breaking the dark and hidden silence,
give yourself away.
