I'm late

before I went to the babyshower

Britta dragged me to sheepherder's breakfast, which is something I'd definitely have taken you to if you'd come

chorizo & eggs & pimiento sauce, and bottomless frozen sangria & churros

but I hadn't an appetite, I drank all of the frozen sangrias

and the sugar tangle of the churro couldn't quench anything

on the way to the babyshower I thought it would be best if I showed up pregnant & engaged

like my two cousins, respectively

and I'd take the party away from them

and that was funny to me

because I felt the cling of forever

at the notion

she says forever to the guy who said marry me

she says forever to the baby she's doing

and that is a word I have a strangle-to

but it never ever stops finding me for trying.

I guess you all fell in love with someone else,

it's what I'd have done if I were you

but I never want to be like that

   I may be a planet

a gassy little planet

but I'm solid

even in orbit

and I'm a relier 

and I'm rely able

for always I say always,

and forever is in your mouth

and you spit it at me

and it clings with suckers in me

and now I'm a danglefish

and I'm a tanglegirl

and I'm still an alwayswill

                        alwaysdoes

and I'm still a forevertry

                      foreverdo

and may be you see me banished

bashful

tender or miserly

but as they say, I am not a broken thing

             though I have my broken things

we can't be altruistic we can't be selfish

we can take care

we can take care

&

we can take true care of us.

I wish I had health like yours,

but I'm more lightning

than you are cloud

talkaway the nighttime

do I know what to makeout of you? not even trying, but desperate to. I have the familiar glasses, the quench, and maybe the too-many mentionings, but I am still in one place, and you have left already. but my place is still on the warm, late-night pavement, and my heart still beats beneath a barefoot, but yours has wilted in the slightest in the clearest, and it has begun some slither towards away. even the foods I want don't exist. is it the overabundance, the apostrophes, the apostrophe's. I don't remember you like I should, only I could see perfectly in gesticulations, in caricature. this looks french. your beard in your bathroom, in your couch, in your shower making your hair in snakes, your sad mouth, your eyes looking because they do, right. I can answer that question even if we never speak anymore, still. did we argue into the morning? did we disappear into the morning?

tell me I'm right tell me I'm wrong tell me there's nobody else in the world & who could care? longhair, louisville, mymorningjacket is playing on tuesday

how many of us are there? & you do sometimes tell. but it's cryptic, it's deathly, it's in the ground for you already. but I amn't. & I will try to never will be. I will outlast the saddest-most, the fingers-through-my-hair-most. the ones with the eyecontact, the ones with the hands twice as big hands, long & thin ones too. tendrils in humidity. fine in the talking small. & I know not how to hideaway.