The Tears of January Second

How it marred my soul  
to hear you murmur me your last night-words  
and to know exactly what they were! -  
not "goodnight"  
but the last drops of a drowsy conversation  
who had no successors save your slowing sleep-breath.  
 
I noted that thought when the uneasy morning came  
to drag you away from me,  
working through my own nerves;  
tears dropped from the first alarm  
to the minute my sweatpants floated unwillingly over wet ground  
toward the Greyhound,  
to the overwhelming vividity of black asphalt under my bare feet.  
I could sense and was unable to flee the morning's sharpness;  
it poked at the monster in my chest with a very long stick  
through cagelike chambers  
who left it no rest  
and the monster howled at the suicide  
that was loving you and waiting for your bus;  
that had been taking the correct turns to the station  
in my clingy, gray city  
which stuck to us like the familiar sweat on our sheets;  
 
I cannot do this,  
I cannot focus on that image and develop it calmly,  
this is not an essay,  
this is not rhetoric,  
this is me needing you and the subsequent dopamine;  
this is me aching to know you will murmur good morning  
more than once when I wake up tomorrow  
to adore your sleeping eyes  
long enough to coax them open, and  
this is me  
trying very hard not to cry  
so I can unclog my nose and catch the last of the smell of you on our pillow:  
 
this is me,  
clutching a murder-wish for "visiting"  
and a rose for "moving in;"  
this is me,  
who fits your torso perfectly  
from both sides  
and who spits on any circumstance that might shorten your life;  
this is me being crushed by "alone" and  
singing under the weight;  
me, who knows that the only subject  
I can hope to write about for a silly amount of time  
will be you,  
 
fantasies of you,  
memories of you;  
images of you and any scene you occupied;  
this is me begging any such scenes  
to notice the beauty ringing in their midst  
as they exist singularly,  
having happened.