Sunday, April 24, 2011

day 24 pome 21: thinkin bout change

Last Poem for a Boy

I didn't mean to write those poems, they just
happened. I needed to write, had a hunger
for words, and I sat down and whatever was

on my mind just then was the poem. It's not
your fault, or mine, that so many came
to be written about you. I wonder how

it made you feel, if you liked it, felt proud,
or ashamed, if you thought I was silly,
pathetic, a dreamer, a loser, who knows.

But of those precious short weeks we shared,
more poems came about you than for anyone,
ever. Then before I even had a chance

to wrap you up in my words for good, to
blanket you in verse, to plaster stanzas
on your skin with my mouth, you had found

someone new. Nothing to be done. I moved
on, eventually, or thought I did, until one day
I actually had. And now, I'm sure you've seen,

I have my own true love. It doesn't matter now
that you kissed me outside the pizza parlor,
that you washed me in the bath, that you

waited until I was ready. All those things
are in the past, and I measure the love I have now
for him in poems, and I cannot stop writing. Don't

be sad. I'm not. I hope you're not. One day
you might even forget I ever wrote at all. The arms
I sleep wrapped in now are warm poems of their own.

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