The man I love these days he’s gone so far away that I can’t look outside and point the way, it’s around the curvature of the earth. I want to describe what velvet words I remember, what clawfoot tub memories I have to offer, but I have no music here and am too hurt for silence. Instead I’m caught in lines that I wrote for a poet friend that he’s never heard. ‘you stand, and you look at me, and poems pour out. They slip under my skin and try to take me, licking like letters in envelopes closed.‘ Maybe because there are no letters except in reply to those I send. Maybe because I want to touch him again, feel his breath in his sleep and let him wake up to me, willing and waking, soft and inviting. ‘because when you stand and berate me, when you orate and confiscate the words of a thousand angels, I consider and weight the worth.‘ There’s so many complexities involved, simple ones, which is irritating. Neglect and side swiping kernels of something so close to lying that they’re on more than a first name basis, they kiss. They press lips together and gasp and their hands catch like rough farm hands on the silk of our love letters. Not that I get any, but still. Cliche are cliche for a reason.