tour du table

Elle arrive
Quand elle veut
Comme elle veut
comme toujours

Je suis là
et même parti

She sets down the helmet
of a bike that’s been stolen
The silence around her
tarnished golden.

The unfinished sentences
hang
there
suspended
disconnected.

I ask,
“How can we live without a map”
it’s rhetorical
of course
it was always a trap.

His turn for a verse,
but it may be more
than i can take, 
or worse.

i always love a little too much
and show up
a little too late.

A fraying rope,
A familiar voice in the ether,
the batteries
épuisée

and now i can’t hear you.
But you’ll always be mine,
and i know,
you’ll always forgive me.

Your days will still unfold.
Your shadow will forever flicker,
the ghost in my doorway.
i’ll always remain
a vague notion
of love,
and loss,
lingering under the bed.

Here she comes,
unspooling her bright thread,
ideas and movement

Softness, against the grain
here we go
again and again and

Love steadies the legs of the table.
Her presence gleams
Sunbeams glancing off stolen glass.
“we will build it”
she says,
Earnest and yearning.

Tea still steeping, steaming
i imagine her dreaming
out loud
heads tilted
gently
toward the sound.

She’s so briefly here
and with her near
the future seems
less like a risk.

But the future arrives,
fashionably late,
smashes its compass
shards strewn
across a hard stone floor

“you have all you ever wanted—
how dare you ask for more.”

But the future never sees
what our pasts ignored.

My turn to introduce,
but no words remain.
i gather the shadows,
fold them tightly,
drop them in my pocket.

C’était un plaisir.