A Broken Record Playing to an Empty Room 

It’s when I’m alone

in my own apartment, my own bed that

I think about her most and I’m alone

in my own apartment, my own bed a lot recently. Too much.

Leaving for work while darkness

still loiters in the sky,

Occasionally, I glance back into the hallway and

catch a glimpse of her there like a shadow passing

across the walls, a ghost in a photograph.

Does the love we might have had 

haunt the empty rooms of her apartment 

as it drags itself around the floorboards of mine 

leaving behind a bitter scent 

that stings the eyes? 

When she cleans the dishes in the kitchen sink, 

feels the hot water over her hands does the memory of us fucking there ever flash through her mind, a momentary blinding stroke of lightning in the skyline of that deserted city?

The couch too, when she’s sat there watching tv with the newest one, the one that isn’t anything 

like me, does she feel me there too?

Inside her again like a tear in the fabric of the seat,

or a dark stain on the cushions that she can’t scrub out? 

When she places the needle down on an old record, 

let’s the music we shared crowd the air from that 

cheap record player and sways slowly in her bedroom 

does she remember that I was the one

who taught

her

how to

really 

dance? 

 

Uninhabited

Palsied hands on a door

too white in this

early morning fog.

Empty bottles &

words like shards

of glass.

Wearing the dull

costume of a part never

intended to be played.

Unable to recall

the words said,

though these scars remain.

 

I Carry

 

The cemetery inside me.

Too often I visit it to loiter among

the graves, placing my hands

on the too cold stones,

scraping away the moss that’s

grown over the important parts.

Drunkenly I mourn, knowing

things that are dead,

always stay dead.

And maybe

that’s for the best.