It is Thursday night and I am doing laundry.
We haven't spoken in a week, but as always more than half of my laundry consists of your clothes.
If not for Ollie, I would take great pleasure in cutting them up. Or throwing them down the chute with as much disrespect as I can muster.
But just because of Ollie, I will do your laundry dutifully as I always have.

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

Pablo Neruda

you would never find me here

even sane people will do the craziest thing

even healthy people will give it all up

not necessarily desperate and not necessarily depressed-

nothing more than an unfortunate

unconsidered,

unhappy decision,

like ordering the wrong thing for dinner.

joey and chloe

and i can only hope that i've influenced you in a good way, one that is real and outlasting, and that at in the final tally of things we have not done more harm than good

sometimes, i find myself asking my dog whom i usually refer to by name why he leads me on, being so excited to see me when i come home then not wanting to be bothered and squirming away the next. i tell people i'm at rock bottom because i like the weather here

x 3

I miss feeling like the most important thing in your world.

and walking through the streets with our hands held dangling together by loosely interlaced fingers

I miss burying into your warm body with your chest in my breath

and the softness of the skin between your ear and your neck against my lips.

I miss when you would look into my eyes and with yours tell me that you never want to be apart from me,

not that you need space, not that you need time alone,

just that you need your fingers in my hair and my everywhere and for me to dive into your soul.

I miss the moments of simple sincere passion when you declare that you will do anything for me and the dilapidated walls of my heart crumble once again,

but

these moments always give way to real life.

We can never escape

and the illusion of immortality that love gives is naive and vain