​

I.

a shadow of your hand stretched out to mine in the curtains?

 

a branch.
 

 

a rock at my window? oh romeo oh romeo?

 

 

a bird hit the glass. 

 

 

 

your eyes, they are red?

 

 

onions, allergies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 ----------------------------------------

 

I

leave

​

sticky

fridge handles,

​

chocolate mustaches,

 

teethmarks in the cake.

 

 

with my plastic bag of metal that smells like

Men––

               

“put it in the old couple’s trash bin down the block before my parents are home”

 

-  clorox wipe it all down,

- collect their cigarette butts

- put the mangled pillows back

on the basement  couch,

  neatly,

​

-comb your tousled hair,

​

-                                        pull your shirt up.

 

still I smell of barley,

 

 

and I forgot one of the PBRs on the kitchen counter

 

 

 

 

my mother’s eyes still glance down at my patchy neck

 

 

 

 

 ----------------------------------------

 III.

 

 

 

neat room, 

                                       

                                     //

 

​

 but there’s too many books*:

·    - that(/they) smell like my reveries of you•;

                          -  they/it/you: 

 

​

 {absorb(s)  into the leaves*}:

 

- with your cup of coffee pored over them*

on that chair in the corner,

​

- at your library in the desolate corn fields of your university

why did you choose to go there?

​

- on the q train to prospect park for your internship, 

when we were in the same city for the first time in a year but never saw each other.

 

 

 

you are a double entendre that I’ll never be certain you meant

 

a stare into the wall with eyes that say who fucking knows what

​

​

 before carefully planted,

 

meticulously specific 

​

​

codified deviations,

​

​

that make your honesty complicated.