96. Sketches of an Afternoon

It’s raining today;
it’s raining
quite a bit
today.

I get out my notebook;
I am lying on my bed,
and I scribble down his
name, millions of
times, millions.
The curlicues cross into one
another,
blurring into a haze of
black;
spider webs or
tangled
hair.

I become nearly
cross-eyed and I
have to pause for
breath

it’s hard to imagine that my
curly, swirly cursive
resembles
my love at all,
that this obscure,
dull word signifies his
being, his form at
all –

I take this criss-crossed page
onto the deck, into the yard.
I am soaked, bone-
deep, feet in the
unseemly
mud

and I tear the page to
shreds with the sharp end of my
black pen,
digging irregular
holes into its
dissolving
flesh,
watching as scraps
litter the eroding
earth

ink melts, draining like
waterproof mascara,
which, after too long,
runs too –

my own words
trail strange greenish
paths into the damned
soil
until I
can’t read anything,
I can’t even read
anything;

suddenly: it dawns on me that
I am wet and
cold, and that
the grass is getting long

but, no one cuts it:
and flowers lay, wilted and
forlorn;
trampled worms lay forgotten,
blood soaked into the
unforgiving patio
stones.