Without You
I was doing just fine, a job, a home,
a life—a salt shaker on the table
in some museum not visited in years
Didn’t know that I was waiting
Didn’t know if I was even awake
Without you I am the diorama’s
glassed-in air, the dew drop
that never falls in a time-lapse photo
Of all the empty tables in my favorite
cafe, why did you have to seat yourself
next to mine, taking away a view
I’ll never get back?
Without you I’m a tray of coffee mugs
the waitress spills in slow motion
on the night she got fired
“Very expensive coffee” my mother
said for the rest of her life
My mother who sleeps in an urn
Without you I am a lie a child tells
for the very first time
Without you I touch myself and feel
my hand grow alien and strange
Who doesn’t feel curious muscles
fingering their own holes
Without you I am the sound
of a tinkling cymbal and empty brass
Love whomever, then return
For without you, I’d have forgotten
the many doors through which
the world disappears—
