The sun goes down and the moon comes out and the crows all head for home. The streetlights flicker and spill as the smoke curls past the spidered eaves and the browning leaves, fall already and the only difference witnessed is in the alone. I spit and fume, shedding plumes and panache. The shadows grow unsettled and steadily advance as I sit and smoke on the porch. I miss all the little things that missing you had led to, and I miss you still without all the fixings. The love long gone, the lack and loss go on and on.
I fumble with the phone, looking for the deleted app of my most urgent absence. It is gone, like you are gone, despite all my want and reaching. The restless mind, full of maybe ifs and splintered reasons. Loneliness and neediness and all the little look at mes, the nowhere where you found me fondly before you found me out. I take it in my hand, my heart so sure, the answer always wrong. Is it now, is it next? Oh how I roll and roll, tumbling dice, though I know already. I want and want in all my gathered lack. I reach and I reach though you only touch the others. I touch and touch, dirtying the screen. I remain unseen.
The night plods by, time has me by the bones. I am always to myself. I am always so uncomfortably alone. The burden of being me, out of step and full of wroth. Rote answers before the words make it to me, recitation of the rules as again I fool myself, the moon pushing through the pines on every other line. I count the days, I watch the clock. Your letters crisping in the determined silence, all the good now gone. I see your smile in unchecked laughter, now a myth in retrospect while the others fill your heart and arms. Was I witnessed as I was, will I be again anything so great as a sparkle in your eye. A thing to use to pass the time, a flavor to linger like chickadees, a favor until your wings again alight in restless flight. Shedding yet another self, your bright star always rising. I pick up the phone, thumbs tap and slide, forgetting for a moment all my faults. Forgetting I was not forgotten, but healed from.
