292

Somehow waking up in the same cell
for the same routine each day,
I'm not the one not changing-

as long as you remember not to visit,
not to show me that you don't speak the way
that I remember.

291

Framed by the doorway
holding all the things you decided
I didn't deserve,
You should have known I wouldn't beg.

You could have fallen
into the empty hall behind you
as I sat above you on the floor
refusing to know you better than
the words you wouldn't say.

290

The longer I knew you,
I knew that I let you
into my house and let my
air get into you until
it was my fault when
you stayed in one place

289

You pointed the gun at me
and promised it was a rose,
then closed your eyes and whispered
so only you could hear,
it's a rose.

And I watched you tremble blind
in the garden where roses were all around
and why wouldn't you be holding one?
and for a moment you did until
you held nothing, the garden had emptied,
and I'd never been there at all.

288

When there's rain there's nothing else
so that's where I meet you,
and no matter how hard we try
to believe the place we used to live
together is important,
I just can't seem to think
of anything but my heavy clothes.

287

Not that you asked,
but I didn't skip your wedding.
I didn't exist that day.
You don't have to believe that but you should,
I haven't always been alive.

I told you once I go to sleep,
well I admit I considered staying home.
But I wasn't the body laying next to my bed
as you followed a hand out of the church

286

For a moment then I thought I was a child,
with nothing on the street to tell me otherwise.
The dark of the sky
hadn't yet hit the trees
and all the people I didn't see
didn't notice that the leaves
were flattened to the ground
when it hadn't rained in days.

285

I tried not to have expectations.
When you came, you had aged
as I predicted, anyway.
Then what was there to look at for the rest of the night
when I'd already seen this face
a thousand times in the seat across from me
whenever the phone in the kitchen rang

Now in the same seat where I'd watch you smile at my eyes,
your movements never skip and your voice
fills the room with words I'd forgotten,
but had always belonged to you

284

It's in the morning
when I memorize the cracks in the walls
and the sun treats the tree
outside the window
the way it always has

The morning that I'm just glad you could fall in love,
even if I can only introduce myself.

283

The man across the street throws a party every night
to cover up the quiet that keeps him awake.
He listens from his upstairs room
to the last person to leave,
hoping they'll be curious enough
to open up the drawers.

282

I'd always gone to the pier.
Back then it was bigger,
and under my back.

I wanted to ask you if you'd ever been there

281

I was running in the mountains
when the world ended up ahead
and behind me and in me,
testing my bones,
but it never reached my skin,
and I never stopped moving

280

I was in the afternoon
that no one ever talks about;
no one's ever there

to say they love empty main roads,
when all the people who decided to put them there
are in the buildings they already have memorized.

279

It was winter
but I always it remember it like spring,
like the day I don't go to work
and there are no lines at the bank
and like the decadeless street when all the cars are gone,
like thinking only about the weather,

you walking next to me.
And seasons would change,
and people walk by,
and one night, with your face concealed,
you would tell me it was always winter to you.

278

Maybe I left the drawer open
and the books in that order

But they speak to me differently now
and never tell me why except
that I shouldn't be alone

277

They replaced the roof years ago,
trimmed the trees into new ones,
new curtains on the upstairs window,

but if I squint, I can only see
the chimney, not the roof or the curtains
or my own hands
separating the blinds

276

I had to move away, I know
that I gave you a key,
but one day while I was out, you came
to my house, moved things around.
And it would have been okay
had I not liked it better your way.

275

You didn't mean to get so old.
You left your books and clothes
on the street where time wouldn't move them,
make them follow and then you look at me,
like you're apologizing to the waitress for your father.

274

The room shook when I gulped,
and my fork rung when it hit the rim of the plate.
You crossed your legs,
unphased, chewing quietly as the night.
Blink twice if you lied, you do.
And the fork keeps on ringing.

273

A bird comes down from its world-

grids of rooftops and patches of leaves
to land on window sills,

sometimes catching a memory
of your mother reading you to sleep.

272

The ones who know live quietly
in spaces missing air
that aren't supposed to be there,
but he was gone before he ever got
to see his mistake

They know, and they don't
find each other in the woods
under designated trees
or in certain rooms in certain schools
on Sundays

They don't meet each other
in their subliminal worlds,
where one of two things is true,
and both of them mean
that your father must have lied to you

271

It's okay that you didn't change
the way I knew you would-

At least I don't remember what I was thinking
on the Golden Gate Bridge
after you told me you'd been there before

270

It was never just a flash of beige for the couch;
the ceiling below the underside of the table,
the rug not there, but its color tinting the windows,
and never any sound.

That's all I remember,
so when I thought I caught a glimpse of it,
I walked up to your door.
Your shoulders slumped a bit like mine,
and I stayed for a while.

269

You're harder to look at than any other
messed up kid who stopped
looking in the mirror.

I made you out of extra
weekend hours and childhood games
and things I heard my father say.

I wasn't really finished yet;
no one was supposed to see.

268

Once the smell of your pillowcase
was where I was,
it was real, and a lot
like all the other smells that now stick out to me.

Ordinary as a bed at night
and waking up in the morning.

267

You don't know maps,
you just take out your globe
and point
like you didn't really want to end up
where you were going.

The backseat voices blend with stinging air,
you hunch over the wheel.

266

I walked outside the bank
to see you talking to the man
who was taller than you.

265

I'll peel off your face and skin,
and your bones will still walk differently from mine,
and if we walk long enough without eyes
or anything to reach out for,
we'll find we end up in the same place
without one another,
feeling all the same things.

264

When I woke up in the backseat of your car,
and you'd turned the radio off,
I closed my eyes before you turned around
and I laid with the steady static of your breath
the rumble of the road

263

Would I have been easier to see
had I opened the front door,
or did my shadow underneath
look more like me
than I ever could

You must have thought I didn't know
you could hear my feet
pressing into the wooden floor
that ends at the door

262

I haven't tried to imagine the people you've met;
they come with faces that they don't have yet,
and I haven't met anyone in a very long time.
Do you remember the people who were once on your mind?

Tell me where you had to go to get rid of them,
and how you became so in control
that you can wash your hands
and think only of the water.

261

It rained the night you slept on her floor,
and I was still awake.
Staring at my wall where she handed you a blanket,
and you knew what to do.

You probably spoke to her mother
on the phone in the morning.
She must have made you breakfast and then had to go,
and you asked if you could be there when she got home.

260

The people I knew when I was young
must have forgotten all about each other
now, in separate states with the people
who they work with.

I didn't even recognize you until I heard your voice
that always used to go alone with a nudge on my shoulder,
the smell of the afternoon, and the image of my timid hands.

And I can feel it all now.
Say something you used to say
and maybe we'll get coffee soon,
so I can sit with how I used to feel
and discuss the job market.

259

Once my eyes got used to the dark,
you could have been any of the shapes that appeared.
Lifeless as my dresser,
quiet as a chair.

It scares me that you've seen it all before
between your house and your car
and the year you spent in Illinois
when you were just a boy.

258

I started believing in heaven
the year my uncle disappeared and while you were at sea,
I apologized to a chair at the table

but I forgot
which hand you used to cut your meat
and you'd never even eaten at my house
although I'd invited you once.

257

There's a time of the day
I've never been awake for.
First sign of light when the simple black shapes
of trees appear
out of the giant shadow above the roots.

The outside is wider and the air is cold
and the water tower looks
even further away
and the ground on which your building stands
is under a different sky.

256

You, the name that's bounced off every wall
that I close in on.

Who's smile I've watched closer than anything.
I watched it change and I
took the words you said
and wrapped them around me.

But I wanted to believe that everyone was once a child
and everybody loves their mothers
enough not to hurt anyone.

I'll come back in the summer
with my hair cut short
when all the lies you may not have told
may have come true anyway.

255

I wanted to build my house
on a patch of grass you've never seen.
You've already said the name out loud
of all the towns worth living in
to your boss to your brother
in a taxi in a bar.

The closest town to where
your car once broke down
and you finally got home.

Five years later, I'm there,
and the man at the drug store
sounds a bit like you.

254

No one was ever right about you.
She pushed you into a corner
put her hand on your shoulder and thought
she could teach you something about yourself.

She lifted her brow and turned to go home.
You never would find out where she lived
or what she did when she got there.

As she walked away,
her hair was too long
and you hated the way she swung her arm.

253

She didn't mean to keep secrets.
They were just thoughts
that shaped her face
and made her walk that way

next to him in the park.
Twenty years of grocery store days
taking turns washing dishes,
and sometimes he wondered
when her hands got so rough.

252

Don't stop in the diner to watch
the family of signs across the street
telling traffic who their savior is.

Keep driving- before you die,
you'll have someplace to be.

And you'll find that after rush hour
they don't go home, and before they go there
this morning, they weren't anywhere.

251

It's your job to control the music
playing in the airport terminal.
Something jazzy like the people
who can't hear anymore
used to listen to in bars
holding glasses in their hands.

I hear it between the syllables
sounding from the woman on the phone
and between periods of high heels
and rolling suitcases.

I brought nothing to do
but I like your taste.

You must have plain clothes
and a clean face.

250

In a city of a thousand lights
someone has to live alone.
The women at the hair salon
every month yell
"I promise you you'll find someone!"
over the sound of the hair dryer.

And maybe then they go home
to a house with the lights already on
or maybe the glass from the night before
is still there on the coffee table.

249

All the way up I thought
how different the ground must look
than I imagined.

But I'd gotten it right,
wearing the watch I'd bought somewhere
down in it.

I might even want to go back
where I can separate the trees
and look inside the windows of the houses
where people don't disappear beneath their roofs.

248

My arms are stiff
as if you never stopped touching them
and I smell you in my clothes.

They itch in my skin and you're
halfway across the world by now
and matting down my hair.

247

I never blamed you for the things
you did when I was asleep.
Just don't tell me what they are
and I won't wake up in the middle of the night
gasping at the empty side of the bed.

246

You touched her chin and told her
she did nothing wrong. She said
"I wish I was your sister,
so you'd love me by default" that she could

be your happy uncle who always brought
a new baseball cap,
or she could be the next door neighbor
who's early morning wave hello
became as familiar as your front stoop,
the handle on the door.

245

Stay in the spot where you were born
in the middle of nothing more than a field
and your house never more
than a shed

244

I want to bring you where I grew up.
The door I ran out of every morning,
the field who's every season I knew,
so I don't ever have to remember a time
without remembering you.

243

I walked for days
down a wild river with no name
past so many vines and damp alcoves
that I couldn't believe my watch still worked.

It all disappeared when I walked past you,
and nothing looked like home
except the sky, which at night
came down with the fog.

You grabbed me and looked me in the eye,
and the air in the world that never knew you
felt just like your breath.

242

Don't leave; you used to want to talk to them too.
They'll ask you where you're going
and you'll tell them somewhere cold.

Walk barefoot through the snow just so
your blanket will feel warmed
when you finally get home.

241

On top of smashing glass explosions
plays a string quartet,
a voice to a child,
a bird hums,
someone screams.

I don't know which way to go
to find it all
or if I'll want it still when I get there
so I turn the world dark
and walk in a straight line.

240

I'd been wondering where the door was to alone,
but I found it in the basement
of this narrow place you own.

White in a white room
with metal pieces on the floor.
Paint peeled around the hinges of the door.

I went upstairs to eat dinner at your table.

And I don't know what alone is like-
if it's changed since I was younger
when every beautiful storm that I inhaled
was just one of the people who I'd once been.

239

Whisper words on your bedroom floor.
Oh now, people know your name.
Look what you told them you could do.

You said you could make the pigeons sing,
make rifles dance together in a chorus line.

You did it all once and nobody saw.
Oh now, everyone's watching you.
Finish off your speech,
then walk off from the podium
out into the street
where the people know your name.

238

We were kids in the same city
and we went to the same parks,
and gripping large hands we looked
up at the same store windows,
neon letters on the delis,
tiny gardens in front of old brownstones.
We must have crossed the street
in the same crowd once before.

But I met you old
after I came home
from cramming miles of highway and sea
and fields of hills of amber leaves
up into my sleeve.

And you couldn't see it all fall out
when I let my hand down
to brush yours

237

The day before I met you
was the last day that the weather
made me happy, that the colors in the air
made me breathe differently.

And the thing that I thought about
was the next thing to do and I knew
that I'd have to go to the library
in a day or two.

236

Wake up tired from the lights
that blinded you in your sleep.

Go to bed heavy from carrying dust
that stuck to you as you walked on the street.

235

I could sleep somewhere else tonight,
but I'll still lie there with my knees
to my chest and the ticking black around me

234

At your reception, I come to understand
the tablecloth and the centerpiece
that you picked from a catalog
months ago.

233

Even you,
changed. I watch you so you wouldn't
but you did anyway.

You, the only thing left from the mountains-
the only think I brought back
from the highest that I've been.

As I watched the peaks whirl around me
you offered me some water
from your canteen.

232

When dirty laundry shares the bookshelf
and the books are on the floor,
the hallway to the front door out
inclines until it's too steep
and you can't walk and it's day.

People are at work. And you'll be here tomorrow too
and all the named that used to come to mind
far away and overused.

And it won't get you out of bed
but it'll help you go to sleep
that all you remember about your last
Christmas with your family
is your cold breath on the flowers
around their mailbox
and your niece on the piano in her velvet green dress.

231

The grown man on my wall
doesn't scare me anymore.
I still don't know what it's a shadow of,
I must have moved the furniture.

But I hope it never goes away.
No face to change when I do anything.
And even if he had a mouth,
I don't think he'd say a word.

230

I've either loved you forever
or never at all,
but always you were there
in every memory of every
day I was alone or I was
on a plane back home.

229

As if you were the only thing that changed.
Not the seasons or the year
or what I do each day.

Just you, so I'm here
in case you change back.

I wouldn't want to miss another spring
like the one when I used to pass you
every morning on the stairs.

228

You can whisper many thing
sitting in the pew.
While my third cousin gets married,
you tell me what to do

about the man who's lived here for years
who I just introduced to you.
You both wear the same watch,
and you're truths can't all be true
but neither of you lie.

I love you but don't follow me
to the tree than can be seen
but hasn't been.

227

You couldn't avoid mirrors,
so now you won't look away from them.
Afraid you'll be surprised
when you look back at it
to finally notice your face has thinned,
the creases between your mouth and your chin.

Nothing changes in a second.
In the mirror, your skin stays on your bones.

226

When you step onto the moon,
I bet you look first at the earth
and the blue is as still as the green.

Where somewhere there's a city,
there's a building,
there's me

And the sky is there,
but I'm looking down
at the sock you left lying on my floor
and I close the windows to worry about
where you've been since you left it there.

225

He says he's going to be an astronaut
and shrink into a speck of dust.
Landing on every book he forgot,
and every kitchen appliance that hasn't been touched,
since her and her bucket of reasons
filled themselves with space.

224

You said I could keep you,
but only if I sit in front of your door
and make sure you don't leave.

But I didn't want to bring you
to the creek in my old neighborhood
to the Spanish steps,
or to my living room.

223

Then when you finally touched my hand,
I watched us from a park bench
taking notes and holding on
to the few words I could hear.

Following us home,
I hid by the trees
and when I watched us go inside
there was only one of me
and by the lamp I could see
every line around your eyes

222

First we shoot into the sky
and hope you'll run
because we'll kill you if we see you
and have to love you even more.

And I loved you when you ran out that back door
with your bare belt, kicking dirt
like a midday child
too far for me to see your face
when you stepped wide to look at me.

221

And I threw out the music box
when I threw out the old ticket stubs,
books I already read

Not because I'm angry with you
for leaving me with it,
but because it took up too much space

It's always had the same spot on the dresser,
but I bought a new dresser,
and it smells like a department store.

220

I tried not to want to go the moon
when it followed me home at night.

Now a whole in the roof is there
so I can watch the cold smoke drift
from where I lie.

I watch it detach from the sky
and fall, rolling on my rug.

I reach and my hand goes through it
like a light projection before the screen
and I fall asleep there
on the floor with the air on my back.

219

Cloudy morning and the bit of light
that tints the surface of your sheets
is sweeter.

Time will start moving when you do
or when the birds stop their singing.
The rest of the rooms in your house will wait
for the clouds to clear
or the rain to come.

218

Once a year in April you sing the song
who's words you never understood
and how long do you think it took
to be written?

But you sing it every year
waiting between phrases as your guests
sit around the table and mouth it
to their plates

And between phrases
you close your eyes and the words
are on wires that tickle your neck as your guests
move their mouths

217

We can't keep sitting in the living room
where there was never anything to notice
or anything to say,
and I can't stay.

If we drive until the car breaks down
the tow truck that comes will seem
as if it floated down from nowhere.

We'll stand on the side
of the road we'll never know as light
and you'll have a jacket in your trunk.

216

It comes to you in a drawing of a cottage on a river
on the hotel walls-

In a man with a beard
and a bandana at the bar in the diner.

The rust smell that blows through
the window of the car before rain.

It comes to you and forgets about itself
to the furniture that knows you,
but won't move unless you tell it to.

215

I was tired too, but I hung the new paintings
when you told me you would come.
It's better though, I enjoy them more
than you would anyhow.

214

I was told about the dent in your car
but I didn't look
You'd still have met me at a free concert at the park