novascotia


i wake up
each morning to
frozen toes

and i wake up
sometimes in the
hopes of being alone,

sometimes in the
midst of you,

with my cold nose buried
in the crook of
your cold shoulder,

with the awful fate
of you
and your (indomitable)back
turned to me;

is it just my imagination that

i miss you even
when you are next to me,

for want of
tears and roses and
valentine’s day
chocolates,

for lack of
a keepsake a
photograph
a tangible frame of
reference from
which to compare this
kind of (stillborn)love
to being alone;

is it just a fault of mine to

miss you as i
miss myself,
in memories so young
that i feel they are
hallucinations,
hints at
what-might-have-beens:

i hold them too close,

and in the midst of
them i miss you and
become exhausted from
doing so, only

to sleep off
the sadness of us,

and i do dream of you,
i do,
but always
in the bars and nightclubs,
ordering up another muse;

i dream of the ways
you attracted me to you

and how they might
apply to someone else,

always forgetting myself and
how badly i suffer for you,

how raw and real
my love for you feels
as it courses through
the sacred and profane dooms of
my heart’s hidden rooms.

sometimes i know
there is no bridge i can build
that
you would not
burn

to stay in step
with the other men you
adore,

who would never
dream of you
living with rats and sleeping
on dirt floors, product of
a father who didn’t love you,
a mother who
couldn’t care for you:

	the few things i know about
	your improper childhood,

that justify you for you
and justify You(sucklysweetalmighty you) for me;

and i do forgive you,
i do,
despite my (psychological)pitfalls and cracks
i let nothing slip through,

all the things you offer me
are held in
equal value;

is it wrong that

someone so
fearful of my
(three,sacred,)Words

should make me feel so empty
and yet comfortable
with that hollowness
feasting on my gut,

as wrong as
it may be

to ache for
the fleeting moments of us:

given my
blithely
respectable loneliness,

i deem(by faith) myself
your lover
though faithless of me you are,

and i do love you,
i do,
but my heart beats conditionally
for you,
patiently waiting
to be believed in
like an atheist’s God




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