You smelled like reds
when I shook
your hand for the first time.
When last I looked at you,
every scent on your fingers
had been scrubbed off'
you smelled and looked like nothing
I ever knew.

Your Marlboros and my Camels
smoldered together for six years.
They sat beside us through
the Simpsons,
hung from our lips
as you explained Taoism,
sat in tiny ashtrays
while we were drinking Newcastles
and thinking up
all the terms for genitalia'
I loved sexual psychology. Didn't you?

(I forget you can't hear me anymore. I must find someone else to talk to.)

Your long, black ponytail
was so beautiful. I tried
to touch it sometimes, when
we hugged goodbye,
but then you cut it and
never again could I
reach you like I wanted to.

I haven't met anyone else who
carries their books around in their cars
like you and I'
the unofficial bookmobiles of Monroe.
But we would work for no library, or corporate man, until...
we did.

You got a job
at a Christian publishing company.
I poured espresso
for people who didn't understand
the composition of cappuccinos
and worked at a park where
I was removed from nature.

I sat in a septagon, asking
for a dollar
and looking at trees from behind tinted glass.
That must've been the time
you began to watch your life
from a similar place.

I know how it feels to shiver,
even when everyone is staring at you,
thinking you're crazy because
the room is hot and overcrowded. I know,
and so I always carry a jacket
and a bemused expression,
but you were never so well prepared.

I wish I could've smelled your hands
before they cleaned you up.
I bet they smelled like reds
and alcohol and the stench
that rises from facing a shotgun.

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