she spoke to me
in a dream last night
i hadn’t heard
her throaty voice
in the long decades
since she took her life
yet when she spoke
i remembered the fever
that consumed us
whenever we collided
from the first time
she woke me up with
a story about needing
to talk to each time
she knocked on the
window in the middle
of the night after
leaving the bar full
of vodka and needing
something more to take
the edge off of life
we would laugh about
the guys buying her drinks
hoping for a hint of
what she couldn’t wait
to wake me up with
exhaling the exhaust of
the joint we share in
long deep kisses that
sent electricity down
our inebriated need for
connection in a world
neither of us ever
felt at home in except
in sultry midnight rendezvous
where the hunger kept
buried behind masks was
allowed to take over

she didn’t approach me
didn’t taint the moment
just flashed that smile
that i could never manage
to say no to and i tried
to ignore the sadness
darkening those blue eyes
as she asked how i was
perhaps feeling i had
a lot to get off my chest
and knowing how i never
burden others with my
unbridled depressions
and we sat and talked in
shallow pools of sleep
waiting patiently for me
to drift off again for
a protracted conversation
part of me was aware it was
just me talking to myself
a sorrow laden acetate over
the face i couldn’t face
taking the shape of the
person i failed the most
unwilling to acknowledge
deep down the only person
i have ever failed truly
is the insomniac fool
telling secrets to the
phantoms of my buried past
as i rambled endlessly
into the void swirling
fervently amid my broken
how i hadn’t written
since they found her body
and now couldn’t plug
the dam as the words pour
to flood my hollow skull
with birdsong and the
wildflowers that blossom
in the cracks of my soul

i wish i could believe
in anything at all
that it was her giving
me a little bit of closure
letting me forgive myself
for the sins i never
committed myself yet
carried in pitch black
smears all over my heart
but that isn’t a luxury
a fool with too many
brain cells that won’t
succumb to the poisons
i ingested like a sport
to fill the vacancy from
every time my best attempts
were lost in transition