highway lines

I.
atlas sprawled open on the picnic table, i
brush the inkstained pages with lazy
fingers, tracing routes that could take me somewhere
if i'd only just leave here, leave home.

II.
instead i just wonder.
i could be there, so i am there,
i am far away, i am borne of other lands,
other times, other people; i imagine and think
just because i can touch this map
the thoughts are real.

III.
i am a dotted line spanning continents, my fingertips
span maps and time zones and so my body
spins a disproportionate, disjointed dance in
the space between the oceans.
i trace avenues and highways
but here i'm anchored, home,
i'm the dashed yellow pavement line
in the road spinning round and
round on the same street every day.

shelved

little russian nesting dolls
we sit but never move


in the end it seems that there are ropes that bind us,
tight around our ankles, keeping us
here, little nesting dolls, shelved
tethered and empty, hollow but for
dust and dreams of the roads and
cities and traffic and
windows framing more than one tree.


people laugh, walking by
and we'll hear the incessant bell-jingle
of words of conversation
but always in snippets, floating,
always like little crumbs from a
meal we'll never eat.

do you miss me, miss misery, like you said you do?

Dear Fiona,

Weeks seem like years when winter cuts through the flesh of autumn. The scarlet and crimson and orange suddenly sickly grey, bitter white. Bare asphalt, cold to the touch, trees in mourning... It seems the requiem of summer is sung to the fullest. Winter has cast its cloak over the world, and me. Fiona, I wonder where you are, wonder if you've escaped this. My Fiona.

I find you in the smells of crisp rain, citronella candles, and lavender. I find you in my olive green sweater you borrowed the night we laid by the lake. I find you in the morning, when dawn splits the sky at the seams. Oh, but I never find you in the spaces between my fingers, I never find you in my outstretched palms.

You must be so far by now. Maybe where you are, it's not so cold. Maybe the sun hangs proudly in the sky, bronze and warm. Maybe the leaves on the boughs are still waxy green, rippling at the wind's touch. I never stop wondering.

Hold your breath and stand firm, even as I beg for your return. (You deserve more than me.)
But, oh, the loneliness breaks me. I am cracked hollow. I am in love with a silhouette of a woman. I am half of a home.

Seasons, days, and time. It all blends now, truth and memories and fiction. Those sketches you used to do seem more real than the polaroids tacked on my wall. You're the marrow of my bones and I feel you when the leaves fall, I feel you when the snow falls, I feel you in the winter's sigh. You're deep in the woodwork, buried under my floorboards. You haunt me.

It's been so many days, Fiona.

Forever,
Matthew