sorry i’m late

don’t you miss the days

of knowing how to get back here

to the poured place where birds warn

against the morning’s warm slaughter

and the crowds sigh against

the other team’s score

and what of those atoms

scratching at my window

to see me late at night

thinking of no more than a bundle

of no more

like sunlight licked across hair

as lines to astronomers

wondering if what is there

is there

or

like a dinosaur in a museum

still afraid of the yellow overhead

or

like

you

unlike

you

asking

begging

why did you stay

why didn’t you come

you were always in a hurry

to go else place

i wouldn’t be

but i’ve been there again

remembering the happy thoughts

coughing terror

with the promise that it’ll get better

because we are we are we

while what did you do with your hair

what happened to your makeup

why do you smell like smoke

when for so long

you were the fire

that knew

it could not be missed

but even the ashes

have gone now

to smudge windowsills

or canvases which were once

giant trees that could be seen from space

or that dust stuck in soles that’ll never be washed

only thrown out

into a dump

that one unnoticed day

will become home to an ancestor

of an ancestor

of a fly we shared in horror

me puffing my chest

you telling me to kill it kill it

both of us deciding in the brief moments

of generous total life

to let it live

in an outside future unknown

and without us