I got into a staring match catatonic

with Blueberry compote

I sat and cried with your absence

in the Home Depot parking lot

On our walks, I watch the Hydrangeas

and any wayward flower envious

of their growth while my longing

is a stagnant ghost

With roots reaching

into the wounded preverbal soil

from whence

we both came.

I swim but it all swims through me

I miss the mark entire

Whoever was before me

won the race to your heart

the perps played a dynamic hand

and won they won and oh how I lost

I lost and how dearly

I still miss all the parts

you couldn’t hide from me.

 

They called me “almost”

never quite got there

the requisite healing, dealing

the obligatory space and repairing

preempted a fairy tale

And “almost” stumbled through

the celestial circus:

a day late, a dollar short

in the scheme of the terrible game

Overshadowed by darker stars

Outshined by louder conflagrations

Like asking the waitress out

the night Mark was killed

Like losing you to fill -in -the -blank

Like things writ in snowcapped infinity

or the moonscape cliffs

where lovers go to sit,

and almost make it work

Where love never really quite wins

Because the shadows and storms

Always made it a war

a contest or battle

to begin with.