OK, to tell the truth, I’m not really drunk. And I’m not really tired either. But, ah well.

And then she says “I’m going”
With a kiss on the cheek
I watch her leave
lost in the fog of smoke

the music fades
leaving that desolate ringing—like an old friend— echoing in my ears

Make my exit
into the icy frost
the empty streets
the muted, frozen silence
stride forth somehow still brave

As if the path before me is—
I am blinded by bright whiteness—
straight and narrow
I try to cross
battered by wind and hail from all sides
I’m like squeezing my will out of me
like toothpaste from a tube
It’s hard to get that last ounce of courage out
and where do you buy some more when you’ve run out?

Keys in the doorknob
jingle-jangle
mutter, “It will be cold in here,”
into the empty room
the acrid fragrance of smoke clinging
gazing at the fading flowers floating in the water never given
I am declaiming, “They have already begun to die”
The great wisdom of an even greater fool

How long
to bear this weight upon my heart
and all my arrows go astray
it never means what I think it means
and yet I keep thinking to wring
some sort of hope out of the cold, dark night
Pulling down each starlit sky like toilet paper
hoping one day when I wipe, some harbinger will appear

Not the final denial—that is not what I fear It is the endless waiting
thinking one thing
but being handed another
when what looks like sweet fruit
tastes only like bitter ash

And that final gap
that looks like I should be able to bridge
and yet I am always, always falling short

And as I listen:

• “I Miss You” Aaliyah
• “King of Sorrow” Sade
• “Torn” Ednaswap
• “Losing Hope” Jack Johnson
• “The One I Gave My Heart To” Aaliyah

Is iTunes prescient or what? Eerie.