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.