The Farce that will Become History

When you live alone,

the delivery boy looks like a

pilgrim trekking to Rome.

Palm trees are sentinels

that keep watch over unsuspecting

barbarians. When you live alone,

the books on the shelf are your

greatest allies. The ink runs out

whenever brilliance comes.

When you live alone,

you develop a real concern about haunting your

own hallways (already relishing how intimate

you’ve become with the cracks in your ceiling).

When you live alone,

Your life becomes a dance somewhere

between a disco-ball and an alarm clock

(a constant dream without an erection).

when you live alone,

the contents of your refrigerator look like a

science project. No matter how long you leave

there will be the kind of

bed that holds too many kinds of empty

to itemize;

when you live alone,

your apartment becomes a womb with keys,

and you marry the darkness.

You dream of funeral songs and a new

demographic for your life’s work;

of mourners and the kinds of skirts

they’d wear, flat as a denial,

too tight for compromise.

when the delivery boy

rings the doorbell, you wonder how he

made it past so many lines of battle. you

stammer an apology for being so sloppy and

wet, you only just got out of the shower.

You say you are sorry you aren’t a

girl or maybe that would interest him.

Also, you are sorry for telling him that.

When he leaves,  you are sorry

you didn’t invite him in for tea

and biscuits, the biscuits

he’s brought in the darkness.

 

When you live alone,

you are sorry a lot of the time

how often each of us forgets to buy new candles.