dual absense

with thanks to Andrew and Harb

for setting me straight

some nights she comes to me an xl 

t-shirt draped over her like a freudian slip

and says i’m sorry for hurting you

if i could i’d do it all over again

and i wake to find something missing

from the sky like looking past the final

row of beach houses into that uneasy nothingness

of air above the ocean 

gone is the salt-sweet sea-grape tangle

of her unwashed hair its absence

swarms me like flies swarm a sun-rotted 

jellyfish like your hands swarm 

my forehead strangle my arteries

fill my throat with sand 

so i can no longer taste

the sea-salt savory juice how it trailed

down my chin like edamame water lingered

on my breath like prayer and dripped

onto my shirt and i was in no hurry

to rub it out

other nights i wreck up against the bed

and we’re back in the time when she is seeing you

on the side indulging in you a meal 

of spineless shrimp and suddenly i’m the side

a seaweed salad something to be picked at 

and then she is calling out to me come back please

come back like i’ve sunk

to the bottom of a deep deep cave

and i wake 

mangled in coquina the tides long gone out

the soft forgiveness of her body now a memory

i can barely remember remembering 

and somewhere she laughs like a gull

while here i carry the lack of her everywhere

a plastic bag that swells with emptiness

that even the atlantic would take a million

years to disintegrate that you could tear

in half

                        in half

            in half

                                    in half