You ache for companionship.
No champion will emerge.
Your spouse is down with a migraine.
Friends ghost your calls.
Neighbors are away on holiday.
The bartender cannot be bothered
to turn from the Help Wanted ads.
Even the moon, the big-hearted
benevolent moon, behaves
like a coveted woman unconcerned
with your existence.
You find yourself at last call
boxed in 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 hurry 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.
