pb

it is the cursed, lost minutes between the small light in my room going out and the moment of blissful sleep that i feel my most lonesome. it is these thick, ripe moments when i feel most like an ungrateful son, an aloof brother, a lacking friend or a painfully absent lover---it is these painful, doubting minutes when i feel crippling guilt for not being there with or for them, these souls that i love.

when, every night, the reading is done-- i reach my hand to the lamp, pause, then turn the switch. sometimes for a moment i watch the planes silently drift across the window, outbound/inbound (depending on the wind) redeyes full of sleeping people sliding through the night on jetfuel dreams. where do they go? home? the near-invisible, sickly orange glow of this strange alien city so far from the verdant, swampy, lurid place of my childhood lies like a teeming anthill of cold industry and soul-swallowing rancor just outside the panes of glass. would that i were floating these dreams of mine with those blinking lights, bound for somwhere.

loneseome. doubtful. guilty. bereft. empty. roll over, close your eyes because you should sleep, not cry.

i miss them so. please tell me they still love me, even though i left, even though i abandoned.

[asphalt miles, coming-of-age years and thousands of unsure nights separate this lonely boy (soft green covers up to his chin), from those soft embraces, family laughs, and familiar things which make him what he is]

unfinished thoughts---

-----swirling, relived memories

smiles (we're all alone) on old film of recollection----------

----where are you?

...please come home-------------

--i love you---

...i hurt...hold my hand----

---i may not wake tomorrow (and where will you be?)-----------

---still falling, reckless-----

------i can feel myself in you (fading).......

breathless, torn, come back---.......

-stranger-

where are you?

where are you?

come home-------------

...sleep...

drift

...sleep....

forget----

until tomorrow night........