A real, proper-sized, awkward-shape you with bits to spare and old keys that fit no lock. I've looked for you often, though seldom in the right place, and whenever I thought I'd found you inside auld coat-pockets, my feet-shudder smell would start slip-slip-slipping away. Before I left, I'd run my warrior paint over the hook of your nose, and you'd frown. Is it cold outside? you'd ask, except it wasn't yet your time to remember. We only go outside when we run out of supplies. We haven't run out yet, though it's been years since I ran my brush over your hump-poor haunches.
Been years you've been missing from me. The sun smells like summer last, but more so, the rain. And I pick out salt from my tendril-sea hair, my unwashed, undyed, nothing-child hair. Remember wet sandals sticking to the soles of my feet, my colicky insides causing enough ruckus for neighbor-waking. You, not knowing how to wash your shirt between two perfect-pitch streams of mud. I say you've no need for cleaning, then leave to revisit old highways, tracking in the night-dirt and skidding into the bush play ping-pong with the headlights.
I dreamed we lived inside our old place. Our forever place, but not the one you tattooed upside-down on the underside of your syncopate crook-heart. You dour-faced old mouse, don't you know good things disappear when you leave them unpolished for too long? I dreamt I drove a large, orange car, less sun and more late autumn. Even my imaginary car, even in dreams, carries the cut-with-a-knife stench of death. The truth is, I got strength, but it's locked inside my carrion luggage.
I'm waiting for a big, scary feather-cap man to bust my locks open.
I was moving the car from left to right, and thinking I could drive for hours, should drive for hours, might pick a stranger up straight off the gate. Wrap my legs around the cut-off before they fully shut arrivals gate. Say you can't ever come back here. Mince my words, make short work of our shared small talk, the place you used to hang your slippers after trash-out quick runs, after bull markets, after we had our names painted backwards in the sand.
Love is stopping to pick out ice cream when you know they're dying, and you can feel the backs of your calves thrum. Love is stocking the fridge when you wish you could bolt, and smiling at the dog because animals is something you've loved together. You either hold on to these well-loved things, or soon discover patchwork gaps in the fabric of tomorrow.
In my dream, I was moving my car. It's always ever been your car, but I guess things change when the stomach grumbles. And found I didn't half-mind the freedom, or the responsibilities it came with. I dream of what-coulda-beens so I don't gotta question them out loud during each day.
Do plants decide what soil to grow roots in, or do they just survive?
I'm worried about catching my feet and dragging in my carelessness off the ledge the pot. Harbor my petty grievances just enough to remind myself they mean nothing, that I need not worry so over what I have not got.
I worry there's a tendency to self-absorption that stands diametrically opposite from this kind of love. Guess that's why it don't wanna talk. One of the worst kinds of viciousness is punishing people for loving when you can't.
