You ache for companionship.
No champion will emerge.
Your spouse is in bed with a migraine.
Friends will not pick up the phone.
Neighbors are away on holiday.
The bartender cannot be bothered
with your cry for attention.
Even the moon, the big-hearted
benevolent moon, behaves
like a coveted woman unconcerned
with your existence.
You find yourself at last call
surrounded by insufferable strangers,
wrestling a poem about
longing and self-pity.
Too fatigued to labor for creation,
you scratch out a few, restless lines
and wander into the twilight
chasing streetlamps until you can
no longer bear the shuffle
of your footsteps.
You scurry home and crawl into bed next to her.
She cradles you with her naked form.
Gentle fingers navigate the stories
written upon your bodies:
adolescent scars,
a child's birth,
unwanted surgeries,
beloved tattoos.
Every anxious vibration stands still.
Even the best lines of Whitman
or Shakespeare are wanting beside her.
Leave them in the dresser drawer
and bid goodnight.
