What Was

I want to write through you, for you, into you, onto you.
I want your words to write through me.
I want to write with you on the floor
with spread out magazines and open

cd cases and Hendrix and patchouli flowing

around us and through us.

I want to hear you in the next room
strumming your guitar so quietly

that I'm not sure you're really there.

I want to hear you singing with the Black Crowes

when you think no one is listening.

I want to catch your hair on fire
while lighting your cigarette.

I want you to walk through the room
and not be transparent,
not be just a scent,
a memory,
a trace of something
that once was.

I want to wake up from dreams of you
to find you really there
breathing your slow breaths,

your skin so white
and inked
with imprints of my lips.

I want to dig you up,

hold your bones,
to prove you exist
somewhere

instead of captured inside

a skull that ages and forgets

what was.

kmt 7/9/14