you're been drawing houses on your mattress and your sheets
with the hope it won't be long until it's all the metaphor we need.
and hung about your parents' dresser was a portrait of the sea
and all the months you second-guessed their love and looked for
it in me.  lying in the road with everyone you know wrapped
around your wrists, filling in the holes.  the drugs are homeless
ghosts looking for someone to haunt, to be their host puppet
stage to act on.  you say, "all i want is some concern or someone
to care for me."  you raise your cup, say, "here's to all the months
you never noticed anything."  a blindfold, a hundred knotted
ropes, your hands are forming fists but there's nothing there to
hold.  filling up bottles with dirty roof-touched rain and lining
them against the porch's edge and whispering as you say, "if
winter comes before i find someone to cover up this stain, i'll lie
down and cover it myself but never get up again."  now that
you're a ghost, you're leaving little notes taped up to the bricks,
these sad and somber poems.  with ribbons of the palest yellow
guaze i'll decorate your dreams.  and tie a knot or make a bow
across any broken seams.