chalkboard
network
a poem i wrote after u told me to listen to 'i think im paranoid' by garbage
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.
II.
bend me,
break me,
you have a neat room
but there’s too many books
that
smell like my reveries of you
you
absorbed into the leaves
with your cup of coffee poured over them
on That chair in That corner, or-
at your library in the middle of nowhere in iowa
why did you choose to go there?
on the q train to prospect park for your internship
when we were in the same city 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.
III.
i nailed my faith to the sticking pole
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 he left on my kitchen counter
my mother’s eyes still glance down at my patchy neck