what i crave / i will never show

tonight my sin soaked in blue moon,
and my skin trembled beneath smoke-free lights.
i have yet to figure out
what you cannot see in me--
because somehow,
flailing around my relationship missteps: i still
know my value, know who
i am.

but i suppose you are not meant to be,
and it was a simple slip of the tongue, notsomuch
of the freudian sort,
when a.s. called me your name
instead of my own
to get my attention tonight.
a slip, another mistaken misstep,
another nothing added to the already amassed
rolling bobbin, what we are is
unraveling, stripping to nothing more
then we ever were.

because i know it's nothing.

and i don't know why i stay-
because i am afraid to be alone, because
i fear she is the end of it all and i may never find
another female loving female,
because this is absurd and i am already maybe
laughing at myself.

where everything i am is unsteady.
the garbage cans trailing my stride to the curb,
lolling drunkenly on the sidewalk,
my own steps smeared by two beers
and a table full of coworkers that i love,
a job i accept,
and a workplace i've come to abhor.

i took on yahoo
last week. the night of riesling
and a thumb of xanax.
i offered another unecessary apology
and el sotano accepted. and i forget our conversation
but it rings positive in my memory,
rings with more possibility and a shit-ton
of i cannot do this again.

a funny thing.
knowing you deserve more, and better of more,
but being unable to mobilize
and go awol on your memory,
your busted shatters of possibility and hope-
it is enough to stay deployed in the flimsy recesses
of your own troubled mind.