The Perfume of Fantasy

Saying the words out loud they are different. Broken dishes in every good night. Wearing the cape in split infinitives. At the auction where we meet again. Five or ten years later. I'm still bidding on adverbs I have no intention of purchasing. He's still a sentence strangled by a semi-colon. And we're still writing each other one drug at a time.

Even if it's crazy I don't care. I can't name the places, but I can picture them. The spasms of busy train tracks parcelling strangers into our lives. Little holidays for the heart celebrate their empty boxes and torn wrapping paper.

Saying the words out loud was not the hardest thing I've ever had to do. It was the waiting. To hear them said back.

It's easy to be smart. When you've spent so many years being stupid. It's easy to say the words. When you know you'll never hear them.

The glass exhales and you tell yourself you're done. But you only wish it were true.

The perfume of fantasy so opaque in my nostrils. As I try to breathe. Like shots of jack daniels for the soul.