But me, I'm...

The spots on my right arm that I pick, you can see them. It is not covered in ink like the other. You can see the blood and the scabs and the puss. I stop mid-sentence to scratch and pick and bleed and dream. Every minute or so I dab at the wound to clear the things that drain out. My fingers run through my hair and blood bursts from my lip; my teeth have split it again.

The locks were changed at the other apartment when I was moving out the last of my things. There is a box and leather jacket I never recovered. I went back a few nights ago with crowbar that helped me back in. The jacket and box and new resident were gone. So I left the crowbar and took a bottle of wine and walked to that park where the maids smoke pot after work. No one was there so I opened the bottle and called Leslie to pick me up.

From the heart, my heart

We laid on a couch, in that old house, and cried. We listened to Paul Baribeau and cried. The two of us went to that old bar with Bill and drank grandpa's drink because grandpa had been dead for weeks and no one told us.

We sat on the curb in front of the other old house and smoked cigarettes the best we could. We sucked too hard, or not enough. We called Tony and tears ran down our face and ash covered our hands and we thought this is how you feel, when something dies; when something goes away. But we went to bed alone and didn't know what to do.

We sat in a garage today, thinking about where you had gone. We played the songs that had meant everything; and the new ones that helped us pull your skin back and see you.

And we knew you were gone. And you were never coming back.

We replayed the conversations from your porch; to find our missteps.

We scanned photographs in our head to see where the cracks started.

We didn't find them.

We opened boxes we threw away three addresses ago. We retold stories to bring us closer. We put things in our skin that were supposed to bring us together, keep us together; they just remind me we are all gone.

So we will steal a smoke from our sleeping love. And we will send thoughts or prayers or whatever your way. And know we will never speak; but hope we are wrong.