I remember the long years when we looked for solace,
thinking the deepening well of disappearance can be filled by a drive
around the city, aimless. For the look of distant furniture: a door
to a bedroom flanked by a desk and a picture frame on the third floor
of an apartment we dreamt about living in. The feeling
is always familiar, the way the long hallway to your office
reminds us we are in love; you with the women teetering
on stiletto heels beating out staccato on the streets, and I with
the idea that their rouge leaves bruises on the cups every
day. Before I could pick you up from work and seeing windows
polished and doors closed, I am awed by details we are convinced
should survive the space between raindrops (your mother in
some far off land, wearing pearls and my dead sister singing
under the earth), thankful, thankful, and thinking how
lonely to live in this absence, only grateful for what
we can never feel. Behind me, someone honks their horn;
I am in the middle of nostalgia and I can almost taste
the color of sympathy; in the moment, the lights change,
and the red flickers back to green. I have no time,
this is time, and you are thinking of me, but all I know,
all I know, is I’m running late again.
