1000 times
I watched for you, and waited,
at the window, as was common
in antiquity. Your instincts
had inspired me, heavy and indulgent,
I compulsively composed
one thousand plots of your demise.
For I must have seen your ghost tonight,
at least one thousand times.
It crossed the street, mere blocks away,
leering out of cars, laughing
at the jokes being told outside the bar.
It never failed to disappear
once I turned, shifting my eyes.
Ten-thirty had convinced me, it was you
beneath the pines, hiding just as neatly
as the old trees hid the sky.
I saw you shining like spilt mercury, running
unfettered down the drain, joining electric particles,
dancing with them only to spite me.
Every shadow present tried to imitate your frame,
holding up your shoulders with an eerie studied mastery,
stranger’s heads they’d borrow, to add to the charade;
until one and then the other decided it was time to break
from the character they played.
But then again, it could be you,
employed as cartographer to Venus,
deciding all the colors that the sky
should show at sunrise. Still I’m sitting,
by the window, taking pills to stay awake,
to cure my headaches from the weight of infinities
expanding from the stones I cast tonight,
waiting for you to show your face.
