5.24.06

The very thought of him gets your teeth grinding
worse than the gears of his old battered bicycle-
piecey memories and the constant
beating of your head against the walls surrounding him.

Dozens of strange associations
(bay windows, black magic, anatomy, sticker patches
in grass that looked soft 'til you sat down;
wooden steps, textbooks from the sixties,
Bukowski and inscrutable stares;
frozen mac and cheese)
lay underneath your tongue like
grains of sand or gravel, waiting to turn into
pearls after months
of being worn smooth rolling around in your mouth
that's clamped so tightly shut,
jaws clenched in frustration
while you wait for the too-familiar answering machine to pick up
and wonder whether or not it's worth it
to leave heart's words that you'll never know
whether or not he heard

(but quickly- the message isn't long.)