Philadelphia

I.

I picture you
picturing a picture
of you in clam-diggers
and shin-deep in bay mud
grinning and not entirely toothless

your rake smacks the mud
sounds like a wind chime
as you drag small treasures
to the surface;
in this dead low tide
you are the sailor of old.

II.

I am
thinking
of San
Francisco.

The first,
last letter
you wrote
me

kept in
the second
drawer
down

gets shuffled
around, over
bills and maps

When I was
in San
Francisco
turning
your shirts
inside out,
folding
laundry
shaking out
old desires
exhausting
the meantime
going out
in t-shirts
and miniskirts

freezing my ass off
the middle of summer,
July

thinking: what if
I tried harder? Didn't
hang over you in the
kitchen, nag about all the
salt? Loved New York
City, your mundane interest in
mail order catalogues?

Stayed always
older and overfed
held you, clothed
and in the dark

spun every story
twice, made your bed

made you feel
not like a man
or a woman
but something
else altogether

thinking: It would
be nice to live
here

you wrote: I'm sorry.
A part of me is still in love with you.

thinking: the time we met
in Philadelphia. I was nineteen.
The first place you kissed me
was on the forehead, just
above the left eyebrow.
I was sleeping.
You explained
it to me later.

III.

Philadelphia, that morning, an early
bus I slid into the seat and oh, did
I feel it. The smell of leather all
dead and aged. And you. Your big-
knuckled hands, the blue worksuit
and the boots. Steel in the toe.
The time you went gone for a week
and we had to assume you were dead.
I almost wanted that. To stop waiting
and wanting for you. But you came back
and it wasn't you who died, anyway.
I'm still writing poems to call
forward your ghost, drinking, and
keeping all the lights on.