I want to sit on your front steps,
brush my fingers against your bare arms,
their warmth the way sunned cement feels
on the back of our legs,
tell you that I've learned some things:

I’d say I am the captain of a large wooden boat
with a white sail under a grey sky
in a churning dark ocean
and the ocean rocks me
the way a crumpled piece of paper
falls from my desk to the ground

I know the past is a snapshot;
the future, only imagined
and the present, a movie,
created without edits,
which needs to mean something
when shown on the inner most
screens of our existences

And when I drank, I drank you forever;
I chugged that love and was never thirsty
but now, I only binge away
hangovers of other lovers--
Today, I wake up tired and thirsty

I also need to tell you I had monsters,
only the size of squirrels, which carried me away.
But I was small myself to let that happen.
Now I have these demons
eating peanuts out of the palm of my hand

I remember the hair standing up
on your arm I caressed
and how you were right, so right,
in what you gave me
I understand finally,
why things have moved on

so I appear here to say, thank-you,
and I miss you--
That you look beautiful
in the picture
I put in a frame,
and place on a hard marble mantel
over a burned out hearth.

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