As It Turned Out

The sinister thwacking in the night turned out to be the cord to draw the blinds,
tracing circles in the steady stale exhale of the AC unit, tapping the wall. The self-
portrait turned out as well as it could have. The drinks turned out to be a date after all.
After all that time we spent together I still didn't think I knew her at all. It turned out
we weren't in love. It turned out there isn't a purgatory, according to the Catholics.
The cough turned out to be cancer, returned. The last day of school turned out to come
sooner than I ever thought. Her last day was sooner than we all had expected. Her son
would turn out just fine, we all said, as he cried silently in the first pew of the too-big
chapel, empty even with our crowd. I turned my face up towards the light, hoping
for anything, anything. I turned out my pockets at security. Empty. I turned into stone.
I turned into crystal, lit from within, dim like the salt lamps they sell
at museum gift shops, touted for healing properties; in truth just a desk-light
that's slowly eroding, leaving a film of white dust on your fingers when touched.  

edits

I ordered a mocha on a whim and wasn't sure why until
I watched her make it. She scooped the chocolate, tamped
the coffee, held all the pieces into place and wiped
the steam wand with a damp white cloth, then held
my drink to it, filling the milk with air. I mistook
the pattern  in the foam for hearts; I had said too much
by the time she slid my drink across the counter and
I stood in my own silence, looking down, thinking how
everything I do is a love letter: stroking the hollow of spoons
when I wash them; wiping down the table with a sponge,
making staccato music with my fingers on a keyboard,
begging my girlfriend for forgiveness. I don't know the language
of love, I explained. Only the braille of my footsteps in snow,
a choreography of errands criss-crossing the city, my body
a skywriting aircraft, careening wild across the sky.

Dissolution (found poetry, circa 2008)

overcast, the sidewalk shadowed in gray and textured like over easy eggs from a skillet

mostly i am bitter that the words feel so much stickier, more stuck

than usual.

and the fear of premature decline hasn't left, either, murmuring somewhere deep

getting older and fatter and stupider.

and those evening hours stretch on so long and monotonous and monochromatic when it's cloudy

an aging purgatory.

anxious without reason, my heart beats fast while i am sitting still

my hamstrings aching for exercise

as my brain, lethargic, begs to entangle my legs in blankets for days on end.

to do lists, usually my spine in the whirlwind tornado of obligations, seem frivolous and irrelevent

and i'm convinced the perma-crust on my floor ebbs and flows, pulled by some ether-gravity unseen,

waning and waxing around me in time lapse frames

as i wrestle clean sheets on my bed compulsively once a week.

a school year of accumulated junk looks around at me,

like kindergarteners at show and tell around a negligent teacher:

a purple bottle of bubbles shaped like a bunny from easter,

plastic kids' meal toys from burger king

a stuffed horse from a themed party

my uncle's ancient beer stein, a relic from home,

a dinosaur kite, unflown, hanging limp from a pipe on the ceiling.

sometimes when i'm alone with the sand and the waves

i can't wait to fall apart into infinite tiny pieces and scatter

washing over the earth and the oxygen in my lungs diffusing far far far into the clouds

urging me to crawl beneath the surf and dissolve.

and i wonder if dissolution is the desolute solution to resolutions, or if i'll ever be resolved.