I didn’t mean to miss you this morning; so I’m sitting with your writings
and thinking of the time you said when you look at me you see a can

of worms. An old friend sprinting through snow or dragged coughing
out of a lake. Common ground, towels draped over the car to dry.

We laid in the impossible third floor heat below skylight.
We worked things out in twenty laps around the college track.

I waited outside until the end of the meeting, trying not to itch
a poison oak rash. Most things are temporary, such as the desire

to be a giraffe or heat-proof glass or to prove you aren’t all the things
you have been. When you asked I said it’s like an injury you can’t

localize or tell if it’s already started to bleed. I never meant this
badly, more to say I read your birthday note waiting for a cashier

in a Virginia gas station, signed with love always and remembered
how I wrote my first love poem after we took a wrong turn

at a stop sign, stilled and staring at twelve deer
feeding at the tree line, paused to stare back at us.