Aseptic and Unapologetic

I used to watch the raindrops travel from
point A to point B across the tiny twenty by twenty
span of your apartment’s bedroom window.
(I did this when I was little, only I watched them scatter
across the front of my parents’ windshield instead.
I always imagined they were escaping something.)

After, I’d wrap myself up in your white sheets,
get lost in their squeaky clean existence—
the way they carried an inherent absence
of the day before. I always noted how your bed
was as comforting as a blank slate,
like every time I left it I became someone new.

I was waiting for the validating jingle
of your car keys, the approval of your step,
the ratifying creak of your front door as
it opened up to me. Always.

And I’m sorry I dirtied the stack of dinner plates
and cereal bowls that pervade your sink.
I’m sorry for the soggy Fruit Loops,
the bleeding marshmallow Lucky Charm rainbow,
the cemented Frosted Flakes building a grainy
mish-mash barricade in your drain.

I’m sorry about the crusted faint rings
left behind by the careless clunk of my mug
against your coffee table, the way they look like
Venn diagrams silently trying to sort out our problems,
or caffeinated crops circles posing evidence for
the invasive memory of my coffee breath.

But I know you never miss a spot.
I know you bleached these things out and
wiped them away with a quilted paper towel
in one final pristine stroke.

One Item Checklist

I like men with talent—any kind of talent as long as it makes them passionate, animated, so completely over the romantic notion of being jaded.

I like the artsy and I like the logical; the realist men who don’t put down the happy, wide eyed, chatter of their neighbor, or raise up the dark, pounding, blistered rant on pointlessness from their brother.

I like men who know things. Men who can whip out facts on the insect that just scuttled across my sneaker. Men who can look up at the night sky and find something witty-wonderful-wise to say, and still somehow make it sound like: whatever.

I like men who speak eloquently. Men who know words like vernacular, catharsis, palindrome, corpus, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious…

I like men who are self-deprecating, but never conscious. The kind of men who can laugh at their own mismatched socks, but never get upset if someone else beats them to the punch.

I like men who avoid playing the devil’s advocate, the kind who know when to say what they believe and how to say it; assertive.

I like men who smoke cigarettes; all the drunk smoking, social smoking, chain smoking, only-just-this-once smoking men—any of them—as long as I can catch a whiff of their cigarette.

But I don’t like you, because—you know what—the number one thing I like is a man with guts.

You’re a coward.

You make me feel like the mist that
hangs heavy over some dreary summer
evening, post storm, and murky.

You are the cloudy unresolved spaces
between tree branches;
the black brown rain stains making tree bark
dark and malleable to my touch.

You are the decaying maple leaves
stuck to a suburban swimming pool’s surface,
floating through the season ice cold
and self-consuming.

You are a sight that says,
no need to worry—after this
it’s all over; frozen.

You make me feel like the sun going down
all around these places.

I am the shrinking light
that clings to the last hour of everyday
saying—no, please don't go.