No Hellos

I nearly crumbled. Let all those pieces loose. Wondering. Needing to know. How real it is. Your everything.

I made myself sick with so much business. Again. On another saturday. Morning swallows night in that fitful way. Again and again, you tell yourself, just one more file.

I almost tried to see. To look at those faded photographs. And hear what the pictures would say. They mumbled from within the frames I have for them. And it sounded too hard to. Too uneven to try to hang them. Put more holes into those frail walls.

And so, the silence was sustained. For another night. Another year. Another lifetime of waiting.

For.

What has never waited for me. And never will.

I lose myself in them even after they're not there. I swim upstream because life is only real when it hurts. Or will soon.

Drawing your broken arteries through stumbling veins.

I look to say again sometimes, but I'm all out of hello's.

And I wonder in what pocket you keep yours.

Or if you'll ever wear those pants again.

And how you might look if you did.