I am wading neck deep in a roomful of rose hearts floating belly-up in red wine foaming at the surface, and I watch hopefully as the surrounding walls collapse burying my soul. Grief happens in slow motion. A black and white slide show of static is mainlined through my veins, and the light shudders through a foggy lens before me. Your presence is a ghost. Under this rubble, I nose frantically for your scent. The notebooks upturned with your words are clumsy with memories, and they fuel my mania in an effort to experience all lingering remnants of you. My ulcered stomach growls for you, and I cannot breathe. The dust from this vacancy emanates from beneath the past and it is choking me with its intensity. The sinful envy that I feel for those near you makes me lustful for blood, but I surrender. It has been 148 days since I have been close enough to smell your tobacco and leather, and, this I know is true, I will never be the same.

Margarita bar between flights

It is 9:30 a.m. at home

The bartender just warned me:

She only makes doubles.

There is an older guy talking

He is two seats down

A Korean War veteran

Talkative and happy

Happy to be alive and

Talking about humanity

Although it is getting worse

Fast like these kids and

Obama and Muslims

And the iPhones have no

Consciousness of a real war

His empathy exists though

Somewhere beneath

The surface of reality

I squint my eyes and

Telepathically offer

My reciprocal judgment

For his boozing opines on race

Religion and Gen X

His rhetoric is blurry

Also presented in doubles

His contradiction amazes me

Maybe it's his margarita that's talking

I stare at a heart-shaped birthmark

Dripping from his left eye

My eyes begin to water but

Here comes another guy

An insecure distraction

Posed as a 30-something while dude

Talk about entitlement --

He barks at the bartender

His bruised ego demands attention

He is the type who has a career

A two story house with a pool

A reliable savings account and voting record

But has never had any friends

His youthful awkwardness churned into

Rotten arrogance

He thinks that money can buy friends now

But he still wears a fanny pack

And his white tennis shoes and ticket sleeve

Hanging from his neck

Give the real him away

His wife stands aback with their luggage

She's texting furiously

Probably reassuring their 2.4 kids

And her lover

Mom and Dad arrived well, remember "no parties"

Fanny Pack and Wife are grabbing a margarita

Before they shuttle to a Carnival cruise

Maybe it is worth the money

As you stare at the back of your husband's head

Wondering how it must feel

To be so stupid

And pathetic

And thinking about the magazine shows you've seen

Dateline and 20/20 --

Thinking about the tricky ways you could

Poison him without getting caught

Rule No. 1: Do not Google "how to kill your husband"

Rule No. 2: "top 10 undetectable poisons"

Rule No. 3: Do not consider a teenager or inexpensive hitman

And Fanny a Pack keeps talking at his wife

And Wife hasn't stopped texting

She raises her eyebrows and nods here and there

He accepts her minimal response as "listening"

Because he knows

He must know

Her dimples appear in the middle of his sentences

Unsynchronized emotional responses

They are obviously from whatever and whoever she is texting

But Fanny Pack doesn't mind

He acts cool and checks the NFL draft on his Android

And this bartender ..

Good for her

She sings to Carrie Underwood as she mixes a Bloody Mary

And I bet she gives good head

She is best described as "ugly"

An disproportionately overweight 50-something

She has a man's haircut and ear cartilage rings

She looks like the type who waived hormones when she hit menopause

But she is cool

And confident

She can talk the talk with all of the generations at her bar

And she makes a mean margarita

And it is always a double

Light tiptoes through the static of dust caught in cinematic expression beyond the good Sun’s third eye, and my heart dances

Within my soul, expanded past the skin of my consciousness, harmony meets circumstance and fate diverges until it is once in communion with itself, and shades of peace fall

And I can’t help but see shadows of blue exhaling from the mouths of wild fruit —

Fresh, aromatic, and so ripe with profundity that the oxygen cries with delight, and I am afraid to reach for it

Yellow was the moon watching over the starlight as your face shone through like sunshine amidst rain. Go back beyond there, now. Grey and dilapidated, splintered with lost childhood. With smoke rings hung from oak trees balancing carefully upwind above the place where I sleep. And you walked in without even a hello. What’s come of us, Youth, gone long behind the sallow liver of the sun.

The moon is shy tonight —

Darkness paints the valley with silk

And heartstrings mapping illusion

Hang heavy from a willow tree standing alone

This room is empty and cold. Spirits are climbing the walls like rodents, and the floor is covered in dirt. It is the same room that kept us up all night talking. The room where we discussed our favorite poetry, poets, authors, and philosophy. The room where you told me about your mother, and your boys. We sat here, and sometimes all we could do was breathe. It was in this room where you placed your strong hand on my arm before you kissed me. And you inhaled my soul. We waltzed on the ceiling and we smoked up the windows. I am waiting for the moon to show up tonight because I don't trust anyone else. I will pour us both a drink, but just for my lips. I am sitting alone in mind, body, and spirit, and this heavy silence is giving me a headache. I think I am finally going mad. The conversations we had last winter haunt me with realistic voices dangling on the back of my head. They replay our history like an outdoor theater in Seaside. No one is really paying attention, except me. And these voices are the best actors; I can hear the inflection in your voice when you speak about religion. And the slightly airy pause between syllables when you talk about Schopenhauer. Your words evolve so heavily, tumbling from your mouth, yet it is as though you pace yourself for an audience of reincarnated children. You spilled your thoughts onto my lap, and I traced every single fucking word on my thighs. I mouthed the pronunciation in your belief system and analyzed the meaning behind your perspective. My memory of such glory plays in shuttered slow motion bringing me a deep warmth, but it is temporary. Just as my lips turn upward with my recollection, I am gutted with despair and heaving with sorrow. A morose darkness ensues and I am devastated that you are not here. I feel like harvested wildlife, stopped dead in its tracks, life ripped from its chest still beating hot. I miss you and this room is perverse. I am burning sage and redecorating drunk. The memory of you follows me like an old friend, but his motives are slanted and I think he's an enemy in disguise.

The chandelier was grieving

Opals and diamonds

Draping my neck and confronting me with

An angel’s voice offering comfort

Caroling psalms into my inner ear

And such is the ebb and flow of

An ocean’s wake

Stroking land with its fingertips painted white

So I too felt its caress

Wrapped deeper within my consciousness

A cocoon with God everlasting

She gave herself a new name

And her face grew unfamiliar

In the reflection of time there standing

Up against the mural of reality

The paint was splattered dry

As rubber chips of her consciousness waned flexible and torn

It is 3 AM and sound beats hollow against the oak and styrofoam and the echo of an empty bottle. Time emerges from the shadows, and I lean back. Ghosts knock and memories that are not mine come to play. A nostalgic fog permeates and darkness opens up its wide dry mouth. Life tracks leave scars callousing in real-time along my forearm and hives erupt. There is a sleeping rose garden to my right, it is beauty and thorns. And to my left: water. Baptism, change, baptism, change. It is 3 AM and the Sirens are crying above the hiccup of a metronome, and I am sitting still.