If we were to meet again

I’d yell and beat my breast

Who the hell do you think you are?

You’re nobody, just like me –so stop

You’re not any better than I am

so don’t sing it to the rooftop.

If we were to meet again

I’d flash my face in yours and scream

It’s lonely at the top of a pile of nobodies

croaking that you’re somebody unique

beating your own drum, rat-a-tat-tat

for the invisible audience that you seek.

head held heavy in

dirty, dirty, dirty hands, while

tears push up against my eyes and

threaten to overflow--cannot

unhear your voice in my ears,

the whiny question of "she"

"didn't want to come?" and i ache at

feeling the tremor in my spine and the

cracks that shatter through my bones at

the thought of disappointing, of

hurting you, even if you laugh it off later

and call me dumb for believing you--i

tried to say the words of "i don't want to"

"see you," even in the privacy of my own

room, but i couldn't, i couldn't, i couldn't make

the words come from my lips; couldn't stop the

racing of my heart for hours afterward.

and only half of this is true, as

i didn't even see you today. only really

re-enacting previous scenarios and pretending

that maybe i am stronger this time.

i do not think

so.

and my eyes close, soft against the pale and freckled

skin i have, tears so absent from my ducts that

i think maybe my emotions have finally dried

up, finally dried up, finally dried up

and i ask--i ask!--will i ever feel again? as

though there is some shrivel of a reality in which i

will never feel and never think again. and yet there is nothing like

this, no shrivel of reality and no hope, none, none, none

whatsoever, as i understand that i will

feel again, and achingly so, in the morning hours soon to come. and

i will also think, and will do so, so very, very, very much. it

will make us both sick, just how

much i think and just how

much i feel, so let's just

pretend i don't and that i won't and that i am

not here, that maybe i--

i want to hold the words you said to me today,

want to hold them close and want to bury them

in the place where they say my heart is.

i want to bury them and maybe, maybe, maybe

the seeds will grown into beautiful things that

we are both so very proud of.

i want to bury the words you have said to me, bury them deep into

my chest.

i want to be someone you are proud of and i

want to be someone you think

about when the day comes to

and end.

i miss kindergarten and i miss fourth grade and i miss

eighth grade and i miss all

of this time i have missed, before,

thinking on what to say to all the

people i thought i might meet and

to all the people i wished i didn't

know, anymore. i miss the idea that i might

one day just be able to stop

thinking and just start--

i want to start over,

so very badly,

except that it is only on

days where i wish to run away

from you. and also on days

where i want to run away

with you.

and let's pretend i am not here. let us pretend

so many things, such as all the things i did not

say to you (although, i really did) and all the things i

did say to you (that i really did not) and just that i did not

speak, not at all, and that i am not here and i will not be here and let's

just sleep off all these mistakes i have made

with the both of our hearts. let us sleep these mistakes off and

maybe, when you wake up, i will have been nothing

but a dream, nothing but a

distant memory that will

tease at the edge of your vision when

you turn twenty-three and when you have your

second kid and when you are taking naps at forty-seven and

when you retire and then i will be gone, from even a

subconscious place, and you will die, not even a thought on your mind

of me and all the time we have spent together.

let's sleep off the memories and the

mistakes and then i will be

gone and you will soon

forget me and then

it will be a-okay

because i wasn't ever all

that good for you, now was i,

and there was always someone better

for you to be around, so let's just sleep off

the memories and the mistakes and then i shall be

gone & off & away & nothing but a distant memory &

then you will die and not remember even knowing who i am

(and maybe that is what you deserve, what i deserve, what we both need)

and i want you to ask me

to stay, not, perhaps, because

you need me, but maybe because,

in the words of my selfish thoughts,

you want me around. maybe you want

me around, you know? maybe i want you

to want me around, because i, so very desperately,

want you around. but i refuse to be around you

if it is not what you want, too. and, either

way, it doesn't even matter, because i will

never tell you that i want you to want

me around. i will never tell you, i just

won't, i won't tell you and i won't

have it. i will not tell you.

and i kind of wish you were

here, maybe--closer, perhaps?--but

cannot fathom anything that you would

think and don't want to think of you thinking

badly about what is happening and who i am, as

you continue to say otherwise--that i am okay--and

i do not want to disappoint you. but maybe i do. maybe

i think that if i disappoint you now and that if you leave now

it won't hurt so bad. maybe. i doubt it. i tend to hurt, all the same,

all the time, no matter when someone leaves and no matter how

they go about it. it seems to always hurt.

and i miss you.

terribly so.

and i love you.

most horrifically so.

“I wonder what

The poor people

Are eating?”

Dad posed this

Rhetorical query

At the kitchen table

Where he, Mom

And us eight boys

Jammed in for supper

Mom’s suppers were simple

But whether it was

Hamburger and noodles

Or hot dogs and beans,

Dad sounded as if

Ours was a royal feast

“I wonder what

The poor people

Are eating?”

Maybe his question

Was part kudo to Mom

And part a desire

For his family

To be considered

As middle class

But Dad was a cop

Who worked hard

Laughed hard

And wanted the best

For his loving,

Lower-class family

We lost our father

Long ago, but I

Can still hear him say,

“I wonder what

The poor people

Are eating?”

My father died

years ago

He didn’t have to

not then at least.

He had prostate cancer

slow growing treatable.

My mother took him

to a faith healer

laying on of hands

speaking in frightening tongues.

instead of a doctor.

I kissed the forehead

of his dead body

still warm

before they came

and put him in a black zip-up bag

held him close

and savored his smell.

I’ll never forgive my mother

for loving God

in some twisted way 

more than she did my father.

I miss him.

If we were having coffee

three gulps ahead

of daybreak

slashed in broad strokes

across

our field of vision,

we would be engulfed

by the heckling

of another dawn.

If we were having coffee

We’d hear the moon

moaning into

its oblivion,

interlocked into

the distant past

of another lost day

in our empty

canvas of life.