I was in the elevator at work, thinking about how you could get me out of:

        a boring get-together

        or dealing with a fool

        or when I was getting cranky

by telling the assembled crowd, “I have to get Mr. Bollinger home, he has a long day tomorrow.”

Sometimes life is so simple, so easy to face.

Sometimes life is misunderstanding, like watching Japanese television commercials

abrupt and loud and disorienting –

graphics and images and things that seem like tokens from a dream

I thought I had prepared myself for the distress of your passing.

Like how words feel when you read them, versus how they feel when you say them

I thought that your death would leave me alone.

But here I am alone. You, you still are everywhere. You are still with me.

When I think of you I see the totality of you –

your eyes your face your scent your being your soul.

The shower in the morning becomes a monk’s cell of three fiberglass walls and a frosted glass door

where instead of fervent prayer

I speak to you about the dreams where you visit me for kisses.

Where I tell you how my body has started to change for the better, how horny I am all of the time

and how badly I need a woman like you to hold and touch and talk to

How you spoiled me with your power, how you ruined me with your power

and how now I am learning to accept alone as more than loneliness.