hounding

You’re like a lost dog in a graveyard, and I am buried somewhere, but you no longer recognize my scent. I bet on you a thousand times and still, I would pull the burning stars from the sky with my mortal, pale hands if it meant you would look at me for a moment. 

Colons are a stopping point: a cliff. Stay here. Semicolons roll on and on; the skyline rolls past the ocean just like that. Go, if you’d like.  

Still, we choose to use colons. We like sending them over text. 

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Two dots, one me, one you. It means we would stay here, with each other, on the cliff.  

The gate to the graveyard is ruby with rust and you forgot how to dig, so I will lay here underground until you catch my scent again. Do you feel as much as I do?  

It was dark this morning when I left for work, and your car was golden like an urn in your driveway. I think of the fossils I liked when I was younger and I look at you now and see no difference. When Sufjan Stevens said, “Have they no life of their own?” I wonder the same about you. Do you long for me at the wrong times, like I do for you?  

After I write about us, I change it to third person, so the “I” becomes “she,” and I am putting distance between my body and heart. But the “you” always stays “you.” You were never just second person; you never are, and I want to tie my necklace too tight around my neck when I have the urge to write about you again. I understand why sick poets are sick. I understand why dogs wait on sore limbs for eternity.  

Still, I write past the colon and off the cliff while you sleep in my words, and you don’t pay rent, you don’t change the sheets. I have love in my palms and in the bodies around me, and you still dare to rest in my fingertips and on my paper.  

Maybe I am a lost dog in your graveyard. The version of you I loved died a long time ago, but still, I circle the dirt, looking for the right place to mourn. 

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