Everything seems
Out of my reach
Like
Water spiralling down a drain
An empty promise of rain
Conversations from yesterday
Music playing too far away
Half awake, half asleep
It doesn't take much
For him to seep
Easily into my mind
Thoughts spin and drift
And effortlessly lift
And I turn, intending to
Fill the cavernous rift
With a snowdrift of sugar
Only to feel emptiness
Helplessness
Everything's there but nothing comes
Distant revs of a motorbike
Purring and taunting almost like
Familiar songs I can't find
A word on the edge of my mind
Flickering, but just out of sight
Like a distant torch in the night
Blurry reflections
Hurried connections
The remnants of night
Dust lit up by sunlight
A washed out photograph
The lilting close of a perfect laugh
The incessant need
For more
The wrong side of a closed door
And maybe it's greed
But what is
A prequel without the sequel
An incomplete existence
Waiting, pacing, heart racing
Praying for the phone to ring
Only to stall when he calls
And he's suffocating and complicating
But then there's
The warmth of his jacket
And the endless static
When he's gone
An empty room
The gaping loneliness
Succumbing to the screen
And playing endless streams
Of bright Hollywood dreams
Until the credits run
And I crave so much more
His key in the door
Words and promises
Bodies and kisses
This person
The person beside me
He's like
A fistful of sugar
How much can I hold onto?
He slips between my fingers
And everything hinges
On this lingering thought
Why do I chase
A thing I can't face?
Doesn't matter what I meant
Or why he went
It's not the end
It's never the end
We're falling apart
And crawling back together

***

Author's note: Thank you (I think!) to Margot and Gil and everyone else who encouraged me to write another poem.

And thank you to the person who looked at this first and rearranged it beautifully and suggested the title and who I simply cannot mention by name due to national security and cahoots etc.