I still expect you to…

to do what? I don’t know.

You know where my house is,

have it mapped out somewhere in the folds

of your ever-clicking mind. I want

you to drive up here

and save me, do something… anything.

I’ll leave it generalized like that, open,

gaping even. Like the space in between

the brown jutting earth and the black

contorting universe. We were in The Dalles

that day when we noticed the sky, noticed

how it bucked in desire for precision and

details. I won’t ask anything of you,

demand that you come over, wrap something

around my eyes and gently lead me away

from the fire. I expect you to

though. Perhaps because when we stooped

under the weight of being only fifteen years old

you made those thin gauze promises

and I wound them into balls and saved them

for when I really got hurt. Can you call this hurt?

I could think of many

different names, each one obscure and pointing…

they want me to call it hurt.

And so I do reach out to you, I

try touching you with frozen fingers, even though

I know we’re long past the age of touching,

into and out of the era of hitting… what are we

wallowing in now? It’s something

separate

something soft and pliable,

perhaps spattered with picked-through memories,

only the good ones though, this isn’t

a time period for sadness or anger.

You and I… we could come up with memories

full of those things, but we choose not to anymore.

You’re on your way out, and I’m

just starting on that road. Perhaps

it’s because of this, the fact that you’re about to take

the final bow in the play of my life,

that I cry for you now. All alone

upon my wooden floor? Preposterous!

And yet it’s happening. So I finger you,

my parched flesh swollen with expectations,

and you know from experience that the best thing

to do for me, is to wrap me up with some

more gauze.