a thing

too oft I ponder

a thing without 

remorse anger jealousy 

always I wonder 

a thing without 

answer solution resolution 

it’s too late to ask why so

saudade sets in the periphery 

thrumming 

in sleep

sorrow sits heavy in

my eyes when 

you are not looking in

my chest when

I watch you breathing

heavy in sleep 

yestermorrow

I longed

to be seen and touched

and heard; made my days

Hallmark and herd then

I wondered 

at the world; wrote of

lovers and loss of

love tinged by grief 

I thought 

in fractured syllabic utterances 

scribbled on anything near

I lived

like tomorrow would 

never manifest 

because yours never would

but tomorrow became today

moments of fond recollections 

and longing has cooled 

whereabouts

 we announce 

going to the store

going to pick up the boys

going to the doctor 

going to the bathroom 

going to take my pills

going to shower and crash

as if our whereabouts 

are a thing of worry 

and still we ask…

                      where is…

Sunday

the betrayal of 

old injuries throbbing as 

new are… mending?

morphing? pain randomly

fucking about on whim

family

I communicate on his terms; call 

on before after days of celebration; visit

mostly in the silence of being present; listen  

to occasional stories of sudden remembrance 

of surface dwellings never deep rarely about the

familial unit that was the first in which 

we are the last; he is the last to hold my story of

a youth soon only known to me, a youth spent

grasping to manifest a thing I never knew

a thing others called family