I wrote about him on scraps of yellow wrapping paper
with the only pen I could find
at a party, in the corner.
I wrote about him outside
listening to the music The Beatles made in their eerie phase,
in a sketchbook, etching out prose
because my pictures always went wrong.
Lying in the grass and he wasn't there
and I wanted to flood the pages with emotions and tears
but my letters were cramped
because everything I felt was so precise.
I guess I didn't love him that much.
Then the other one
I wrote about in classrooms
when I couldn't concentrate on conjugations.
I gave him melodies
because I couldn't hear any of his own.
They were pretty songs filled with scathing words
and that was about all he was ever good for.
This one I write about in bed in the summertime
under the covers hiding from air conditioning,
warm and safer than I've ever been
scrawling words as big as I feel, which is huge,
and I try to figure out what this is and I postulate for pages
but all it tells me is that
this
is how I write about the one that matters.
