Pennies Down The Wishing Well

The first time we undressed, I buried myself in your trenches

and waited for the gunfire to stop coming.

Last year I forced myself to let go of twenty-three friends that could

no longer do anything for me.

I sent them all handwritten apology notes in the mail, and two

of them wrote back furiously, claiming that I had “laid them off.”

But the truth was I only meant to make more time for you-

and we go well together, like blood and wine,

argue that we want something more permanent,

something like the handfuls of human hair that the Victorians

buried their dead with, so you grow yours out and form

a bracelet of it for me to wear around my wrist.

I am consumed with light when I touch you,

the kind that guides ships’ ways in the dark; two years ago

on my birthday we made love in the back of a moving taxi,

and you told the driver to hit all the bumps

just so you could crash into me harder.

Did you know that every memoir I have ever read

somehow involves alcoholism, despair, or dysfunctional families?

Most of them have the word madness in the title.

If I were to write a memoir on me & you, it would be a Russian novel,

643 pages long, Helvetica type, bound by the finest printing

companies in our state, and the dedication page would contain

only two lines:

My body is a punchline

and you are still waiting for the joke.