Mirage
08.12.06

For some moments-- you were gone,
splattering mud across my knees
and when I studied the patterns of such
ambivalence, I found words stripped bare,
stretching dirty palms for the coinage of truth.

I obeyed, and paid my despair
in synonyms and slow installments.

But, your cab sped back
across last summer
and a few months more,
so it seems the mud is fading, flaking
on to these new floors.

I made the payments
folded them up and sent them
to find their own way right.
But there’s an awkward silence
where words once whipped,
and somehow the envelope
of your arms is not the wealth
I thought it to be.