I.

We once had a place for peace, in the space between you and me.
A home of certainty without the vibrant static of the other people,
Where love laid sotto voce and without apprehension.
A place simpatico, full of no other voices.
Then there was a home that was not Carcosa
And then I did not bask in my own entropy.
I remember now my follies and how you welcomed
Them in each turn with reserved caution
(for the sake of both our souls)
And where they led us: to strange houses
On University South and shabby apartments in Baldwin.
I remember how we lost all but the bourbon
And lied to each other’s parents,
Yet made it back by the dry blinding morning
On two wheels and gas neither of us could afford.
There was orange juice and Advil and old eggs to save us.
The reel of Chazelle beneath the Christmas lights on Dauphin
Still playing behind our eyes, with Wilfred and horror on the list,
And eventually, a long soft couch and all but rest about us.
We would fight to stay awake, but the enemy wasn’t clear,
So we would falter into stony sleep until the fear of
The evening news crept slowly in.

When the lights came on and the house once again grew silent,
We’d walk about and keep warm with conversation
Despite the weather’s suggestions, while
I would dispense my lies in half-chatters,
Waiting for you to take the lead with speech ecstatic and true.
And that’s how the evenings would go:
You would speak, and I would listen,
And we would carry on from the couch to the kitchen,
Being wrong about most things,
Breaking the silence in twos.
Then I would speak, and you would know me
And we would walk further down the road,
Being mostly quiet but speaking in other ways,
Then we would hear our voices echoing in the woods
And move along carrying a peace without words.

II.

Now I wait for agnosia to weigh heavy upon my head,
At this late hour when I want a nail through my temple,
And die trying to put an end to memory,
To see what you truly must have seen:
The evil on my terrace, the hatred within my soul.
But there’s no solace in solitude and
I’m going mad in search of reason where there’s none to be had.
These nights I wait for your chains to wake me
From what seems to be my longest sleep,
So I reach for you, a bottle, a life from being sober,
And then I tremble in my paper sheets, stained with sweat,
And I remember you and it starts all over.

I saw you in memories that you did not belong to,
In days rabid with your absence.
I remember meeting you on a beach and smiling
And, many years later, finding death by inches as
We walked along the coves on the cracked shells of
Hermit crabs and skeleton ketches.
I remember almost losing you in the water.
Do you remember those freezing beaches?
The way we wept along the coast?

No.

Those things are behind you now, as most things are.
Your love now remains there in the frigid distance,
where the waves continue to tuck it underneath,
keeping it buried in ways ever changing and
There it will stay, just the same as you have.
For you must be lost, hidden within our
Foreign past with no other place to be.
Surely, you’re gone now if you’re not here with me.

III.

You’re not with me in Rockland.
You’re not with me in the Magic City.
You’re not with me in Paty or Panama
Or the bayou fog of a distant Orleans.
You’re not with me in the fading Appalachians or
the silence that you’ve left me to keep.
You’re not with me in the songs we shared so desperately
or the strange films that made us whole.
You’re not with me in either hollowed body or in sinking soul.
You’re not with me in the words I speak or the walks I take.
You’re not with me in these burning hours or this crimson wake.
You’re not with me in my empty house or my thoughtless thoughts.
You’re not with me anymore.
You’re not with me.
You’re not.