aayoung
he loved me completely
he had the sweetest, big dumb bear grin
honey dripping even
when he looked at me
he smiled the length of the eastern seaboard
crooked loving sunshine in smiles over 5 o’clock stubble
whilst buying me tiny lobsters made of chocolate
took 1,001 pictures of me drinking coffee, eating lemon Italian ice
marveling at hermit crabs wearing ornately bejeweled shells
navigating social media oceans and long distance romances
from Neptune City to New York Harbor
we nearly sank together
we never truly said goodbye
we never stopped wanting
we never stopped feeling
but he never trusted himself
he never trusted me
though he had many names for me
baby gurl
angel kitten
alicia honey
sweetie poof,
and sometimes simply,
mine
he lied
and then abandoned me to coddle
his comfortable failures.
He once told me the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.
How’s that working out, jack?
I knew he would never have the courage
to call me the one thing he should have called me:
his wife.
so he took her like an animal
but my father’s ghost wept
so she went to the men
like a good American
good people don’t want to believe
in visionaries good or bad
especially when you have red clay mud
starved stabbed scabbed over and over
on your grandmother’s dress from being raped just like her
from ft. Sumter to Wounded Knee
he’d never seen that color red come out of a living fertility statue
my veil is torn
the dog is dead
the natives have resumed their drumbeat
it’s never quiet
in the city at night
however i’ve found
if my boots are planted quietly
amidst 3am lamplight
standing in space once occupied
by a storied brick house where my
great grandfather aged 90
lived and died
i can hear elm street recalling sadly
that he left for the hereafter
decades before i arrived
Hell
is conveniently situated
between Ohio
and California
They
will sell you
candy cigarettes,
insulin,
Camel Wides,
chemotherapy,
God,
nicotine patches,
life insurance,
and a bronze casket
all
in one lifetime.
I’ve done my share. Coast to coast.
I’ve done my share of poet husbands, too.
