Moving. My attention is diverting, jumping, running up and down among the
thousand different things in the dark. Moving on, through a crowd. Dark faces, missed
perceptions. Looking for you. Wasn't I always. Smoke.
You on a guardrail and you in my eyes. I saw your near-shaved head from all the way
across a field of hazing dreaming: up near the band, so tan, drinking beer. You had a
cigarette in your hands the next time you walked by, in a crisp white shirt amidst the
dirt. There was no escaping. Crowds and crowds of strangers, you walk by like a halo, the
only face I didn't want to see.
Moving.
I didn't glow; I didn't swoon. I almost
sank. Here we go. Again. Here we go.
(For all those who would like to keep on breathing: 1) Let go. 2) Let
go. 3) Let go. 4) Don't hold on.)
Throbbing rockabilly music all around, colored lights on a stage. They light the
faces all around but I can't see the forest for one tree, missing, no longer there.
Wondering when the girl with the white flare jeans is going to actually kick me, trying
to move, trying to see, rocking back and forth and back and forth, sure I'm a shuffling
madman to any eyes that can see. Looking, always looking for you, wasn't I always.
I'd imagined you'd come and find me by our tent, take me off into the darkness
when I suggest a walk as if you'd been thinking the exact same thing. Resume the
intimacy where it fell and wear it as if we had never taken it off. As if you hadn't put it
aside so gently, so harshly, so completely and without warning. Sure you'd understand at
last the home you could have found between my hands.
Stoned.
Sad.
Thinking it might be a good idea to have a smoke as I see the other butts around
me; unconvinced that I can still handle a cigarette. Remembering you and tilting my head
again, wondering why you aren't just like another drop of water in this fall, transparent
and unshrouded by mystery.
Why you aren't here, in this crowd, with me.
You're here, after all. You're here.
Why aren't I? Dancing in the darkness by myself, and trying to
ignore the ghost by my side. I am trying to pretend I am not a ghost myself, so pale for
all these thoughts of what's not here, what I put away, what should have died so long ago,
now at rest with your memory, aside. Letting beats of music penetrate this sadness.
Drifting off. Remembering the crowd. Becoming one.
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