Like You’re Leaving

I’m thinking about being somewhere hot and I’m wearing the red skirt you like. There are bells down the street that fall into the same kind of rhythm in which you speak.  

I’m thinking about renting a house in the desert so I can work for a little while and stop being several people at the same time. I’d sit in a patio chair and wish I was person who smoked. I’d wash my hair in the afternoon and wear sundresses and read books where everything smells like sage brush. I’d ask you to visit but you’d be busy, and I’d write a poem about the sunset, and try to talk about the light on the side of my rented house. I’d drink gin and not learnt guitar and write mostly in the mornings and then again late at night.

Lately I’ve been loving you like you’re always leaving, because you are. I’ve been trying to protect something that I’ve already put on our table and it’s too late to take it back now. I tell you on an empty streets while the locals go in, and the rain comes down that, I love you, and there is no coming home again. I think about that now. 

Sometimes when I’m alone I think about being in the car, and watching you change lanes and check the waves at the same time. And how of every part of your body I must knowing your driving arm in the most detail. I think about the windows being down and back when the hillsides weren’t so cold, and then the temperature of your lips when you climb from the water. And here I am humming: cold coffee- moms gone- do you love me?

We’ve been making up what winter might look like. Our island of time. I’ll get over my need to be somewhere else. And you’ll come home. We’ll talk about how cold the bedroom is and pile blankets on top of our thin bodies. You’ll run warm still. We’ll drink cold coffee, and I’ll promise to stop holding tight to what is no longer mine.