The Number You Have Dialed Is No Longer in Service

Since you’ve been gone,
it feels like a Monday after
a long holiday, all stale
coffee and jammed printers.
The mail is junk and bills,
and it’s always leftovers for
dinner. I don’t feel lonely.
I don’t feel much of anything
except that the carnival has 
left town for good, like it never
happened. Your body became
ash, blowing into my eyes 
as I scattered your remains.
My vision blurs with their grit, 
and all my tears only make it worse.

Capture the Moment

Small fires burn in the street
and the smell of gunpowder 
permeates the night. Another 
fourth of July, and I feel the old
pull of sadness for summers gone
past, the wish that if I tried hard
enough, I could shed myself and join
the sparklers that erupt in the sky,
that beauty could erase my weariness
and grief, that somehow the fires
would burn forever instead of just
on Independence Day. And all 
my life would be consumed 
in smoke, blotting out the sun, 
leaving only traces of glittery 
explosions, of all the spectacular 
before it evaporates before my eyes. 

We Now Return to Your Regularly Scheduled Program

I tell you, I didn’t know
it would be like this, the past
a fever dream of endless days 
that led to this version of myself,
a haunted house that I dare not
enter. I am what happens after
you break the glass in case 
of an emergency. I am the thing
you bought, the one you imagine 
you couldn’t live without it until 
its possibility morphs into reproach.
You aren’t the only one who 
keeps something because you 
don’t know what to do with it.