My Baby Don’t Love Me No More

The clock struck midnight when his voice broke, "my baby don't love me no more."

It hummed with heartbreak,

wrapped in blues,

& rubbed out

between guitar strings. "I ain't got nobody,"

he rasped, "I ain't got nobody,"

he said

to nobody

with his fingertips

on strings;

head bent, slightly;

a single palm on forehead;

a thick sigh between heavy breathing...

"Real, real gone," he breathed,

"gone since day one." Gone

before the pull of pain (which came later.

much later). The pills were gone, the booze'd run dry...

He was a guitar lovin' man, stroking strings with a touch somewhere between

a gentle caress

& a violent thrust. It was violent intimacy;

lust in the dark... dark as a blackberry,

I can still remember

the scent

the texture

the taste

He rasped on; breathing;

each word salt on a sad wound;

each word dragging the past in weights;

chains - rattle; the ghost of history.

Time moving - backwards; thicker

than mud,

than tears,

than blood.

"Detox, cold sweats, the body - seething... first three days are hell," he said, his breathing broken

into a rhythm

of sighs & swallows.