I and Love and You

I and Love and You by The Avett Brothers

a year ago
a lifetime ago
i stood on this same step
i rang this same doorbell
i retrieved these same girls

i hardly knew you
i stood awkwardly
in your living room
trying to explain my taste in music

you cringed when i said folk
(perhaps you’d cry too
the first time you
heard their song on the radio)

we’ve made music since then
sometimes heavy metal
sometimes hip hop
just a taste of alternative

but you still haven’t heard my song

i stand on your doorstep now
you won’t answer so i walk in
(it is like home to me)

i pull them out of the room
three in a row, sleepy-eyed,
begging for breakfast
(they are starving)

you open your door
sleepy-eyed too
and there are no words
there are no lyrics
that can fall to the floor
in this awkward living room stance
as i shuffle our lives out the door

You Were Ours

your clock still reads 11:45
we looked that morning
you might have been late
you weren’t late. you were ours

will it still read 11:45 in a year?
i wonder
you ask what i am thinking
i am thinking of my bed
his arms around me
i am thinking of my bed
no longer mine

add this to my
insurmountable list
of why’s

there will never be a because

of all i have lost in
seven weeks
seven months
insurmountable

You Are

the teary eyes that mask sadness
behind a superficial smile
the gray clouds that just can’t quite
put out the wildfires
the kind gesture resulting
in an empty wallet

the me i fear
(small child filled with doubt)

83

my grandma’s birthday
used to mean more than sadness
more than passing thought