anna kiss

To the Long Dead Poet Whose Name I Wish I Could Forget

Sometimes you wake up

grave-like,

arrogantly starring at me through paper bags burnt,

crackling like leaves

in the cemetery,

where perhaps your sweatered arms

cradled me forever dead,

and I wake up from

half-dream states like movies,

reading books you’ve written,

feeling my arms emptied of you,

and not remembering what you’d felt like,

only emptiness and sweaters with screaming matches

and you crying on the couch in Tom’s apartment.

Each time the imaginary you leaves me

alone in bed,

nearly ruined for love,

with two gunshot holes in my heart,

I am eternally grateful for your absence.