WEREN'T EVEN MENTIONED

outside the coffee shop window and it's as if i'm a wolf who's
paused on top of a patch of permafrost somewhere in russia in the
dead cold of winter panting heavily after an unsuccessful chase

but really i'm just a shaky human man breathing smoke from out of
my lungs into a cutting gust of wind swaddled in a thick coat and
all i can think about is how your feet will be cold when you walk

here through the alley in your ballet flats with no socks on and how
your yellow dress flying up in the breeze will have to be scrunched up
in a bunch, clenched at your side with your gloved fist hidden in a sleeve

and i'm thinking about how i need to tell you how sorry i am, how
sorry a mistake it was and is to have been so casual and chronic in
forgetting the comfort of the digging of my nose into the locks of your

dirty blonde curls, to have forgotten your blue eyed stares at the
coffee shop so quickly, when your smile was like a good novel, or to
have lost all the sharps and flats of your five minute shower solos

the bottom line is it's just as sorry a thing to forget the millions
of other sentient souls who stay up awake late drinking whiskey and
crunching rocks in teeth, wanting and lacking love just like me

how goddamn sad a man i am to be such a liar, to have made such
promises to myself on those many early mornings in dark rooms lit
blue with all those words on the screen and

to have crushed them, broken and shattered them, scattered them
all over, over and over:

don't forget her; don't forget anyone i've ever loved; don't forget the
ones i should and shouldn't love;

don't forget her and don't forget them;

don't forget;

just don't.