Sometimes this house is haunted. Whispers of your name prick the hair standing upright on my neck.
Sometimes I can’t see a thing. Can’t
Feel a thing. Can’t
Dream a thing.
Lately I feel as though I can’t want a thing.
I wait for you.
For you to come home,
open up your heart to me, open up your hands to me. Hold my whole world.
But you won’t come home. Won’t
Come up rickety porch stairs through a front lawn strewn with stones. Won’t
enter through the arched doorway into the foyer of my heart. Won’t
Rest your keys and sorrows upon the kitchen table. Won’t
shed your coat on the closet floor because our home’s too poor for cupboards.
Won’t leave me when things get hard?
You can’t leave me, things got hard.
Walking toward the yard
I feel the cool of rocks against my skin
Palming them over in my hands,
I hear their beckoning.
Rushing water over pebbles can learn to drown you out well you know.
Well, you wouldn’t know.
You never listened.
I’m afraid I’ve been drowned out by their voices too—
That’s what Marianne says.
She tells me that it’s not fine, she tells me there’s a sickness in my mind,
She tells me all of it all the damn time. But I’m here wishing it was you.
I’ll still miss you in the summertime.
