out into the night again
to drink across the city, until I am not thinking of her
until all the fretting and yearning is buried beneath the deafening noise
of music and dancing, and holding and thrilling

down again,
into the blazing mind and cocaine basement
where the girls are carriages that do not take me anywhere
and the countless strangers who fall in love
are the blessing
and the dreaming
and the anywhere but here.

Anywhere but her,
nobody but her.
Returning morning after mourning
as the workers leave their homes,
successful in my exhaustion
but not so fully distracted,
such that her name is a song that returns in the silence
after the curtains are drawn
and the want,
and the fear of what will come and will not come,
is all the taste and scent and substance
of time.

Please be mine,
he says in those moments of return.
Please be mine,
he begs in the silence.

She is everything
and nothing,
the measure of all he possesses
and does not possess,
the very image of his terror and his love,
and the music he has spent his entire life
failing to write.