For three years I saved
atoms of sentences.
They were fragmented ideas,
fragmented feelings I didn’t
or couldn’t make whole just yet.
 
Like a poet’s ghost
I traced behind memories
and splintered imagery
but could never sit
down to write.
 
And then came your poem.
And now here is mine.
 
Unlike your poem,
I do not want this one
to be obscure
nor do I want there to be
any abstruse metaphors.
 
I wanted to tell you,
at first, that I miss
the records you played
and your flamboyant
gestures: flailing hands
as though you were about to drown--
but I’m not sure I do anymore.
 
Instead I keep with me
a memory of your room
and your cat
and the plant
and the books
which make up the sketch you have torn
but that I keep intact, here,
in this pretense of a poem.
 
I’ve thrown away
the old fragments.
The new ones, the ones
that gathered after you left,
are scribbled in the things
that remind me of you:

the bottom of my morning coffee,
the edge of a pillow,
an ad on a subway car,
or the lines of my hands
that seem to stretch out,
stretch out, and come
undone.