I can't help but think...

That I shouldn't edit poems from my freshman year of college. Those documents feel like a mausoleum that should not be disturbed out of respect for something that is past.

the long night

I.

my god, my god.

the empty space when I speak;

the hood of a car folded crisply in half like a sheet

with glass on the concrete like snow.

shattered china, superglue and stitches;

an irreparable structure that fractured itself at the seams।

there’s a weight in my heart that is never enough

and I shouldn’t have to be doing this;

the stillness of bed posts building shadows in rooms

as I rinse my eyes out with salt; sinking in wounds and it stings,

a lashing of words when nothing is there

but the bare skin of backs to the whip।

II.

today I may as well be the floor

or the clothes in the corner.

you grasp my wrist and we speak of the slow death

and the blood running dry in our veins.

we are no longer people

and these are the nights that will never end।

what is there to bring him back --his toothbrush,

a shirt. I may as well be something he forgot,

a light he will turn off in the morning; the stove,

still burning in an empty house.