Asking After You

Predictable as blocking the driveway with your truckso I can't leave, or will have to trundle through the yard.

Damn daffodils. Damn lilac. What kept us running:the yellow-bellied yield in me or those gentle nights

when you could still be tugged into sleep—simple syrupof cum in moonlight, resignation to the crater of our sink.

Daniel, this could never work, not in this first lifetimestuck between the medicine cabinet and back to bed

until afternoon rots, tequila-blonde at our window.How blown to bits we always were. Remember

timber wolves in the road on the drive to Tacoma? Remember duis?Was that '08 or '09? Your birthday or mine? I only remember

the wall-mounted telephone in our bathroom, the little balconywhere I'd sit and watch your friends, the cops, console you.

Daniel, it's been morning all day here and the birdsstill call me by my old name. It's no wonder they miss you,

summer nights we woke them with our first song: Chuck Berryon the record player in the kitchen, our good days the best argument

against sleep. Us, they're saying to me now—we we we.