You are the winning loser; lose her, hurt, turn the wrong page. All the words are there. You've spelled each one just right and your lines couldn't be neater. But it's not enough. Surprise. Because here is the twist, the trap door, the loophole for all your you to fall through.
 
 
 
You have:
    the shell pink of nineteen eighty-whatever and
    piano heart touches and a serious
    sort of posture, postcards from next door
    and next year and nineteen years prior,
    priceless sun kept under glass – air tight
    with one last hello in your head.
 



   They live in your mouth, your fist, your

     engagement to fear and the fight that

     goes with them, tearing and taking the

     patterns of vivid apology: your body a

     gunshot, your voice a blindfold, oh and

     your taste  a heavy cloud lying in wait.


 
 
 
You are the rate of decay – the speed of a motion that punches you in the spine (which explains how you never seem to stop moving, even when you're moving in the wrong direction – and that's always.) In pieces, the spine looks like teeth. It's not backwards. Even decay is about tomorrow, about next week, about being buried by time or swallowed by earth or left under the wide concrete sky; so you wait, because after all...what else is there to do?
 
 


You have:
    two worlds. One is a half-promised land
    but not holy, an ex-kingdom of inheritance.
    It turns out they left you several castles –
    most filled with things you still insist
    don't belong to you. Not Mine. You say.
    Then whose?
 
    You took it with you anyway – the Stuff
    of biology and memory and all of the
    other things people today call Baggage
    like it could never be anything but
    a problem – your problem now. You were
    two countries.
 
    Country Two has another name, has a dozen
    names, but you call it Sorry. Again with the
    biology and the memory, again building a
    raft of things that do not float, things you
    do not even like. But perhaps things that
    you needed – things you need still. 
 


You are invisible ink, permanent and passed over. If you wanted to be noticed you should have spoken louder, stood taller, added ER to the many knots of your supposed potential. And if you wanted to be loved you should have done something. No mystery, no magic, just the usual do-something list: call, write, text in half numeric hiding places. At least, you could have asked; you could have. You should have. You didn't. Your mother told you trust is blind no matter how many eyes you have, but did she ever once tell you it was passive? You wait, you decay, you run into things face-first, but you do all these things the same way: hands over your mouth, eyes hard and failing, the integrity of your bones threatening always that this is absolutely the last time they will do anything for you.
 


You have:
    missed the boat, the train, the bus, and
    the plane. One meant running away
    while another was trying to be brave
    and of course there was the destination
    of Second Chance. The train was going
    home, but it would have crashed anyway.
                           
    Darling, on the tip of the tongue, it's quite
    true; We is a 4-letter word, Love digested.
    You can't shoe-shine a shadow, and you
    can't  rewrite right. Your intentions were
    good but what came after was some other
    shape... and the difference? The difference
  
 
                                                                            is on you.