Nights In Autumn.

Cotton Candy Pink
was the color I remember most
and your neon green fingernails.
You said your mom died young
in a fire and your dad took off
before you were born.


You held glitter white roses in your hand,
artificial like your ring and the Elvis
priest that chanted on the vows
that many others took before.



There wasn't ever a time you weren't strung out
but the one time you weren't, you asked me
to take you away, marry you, give you some
dream to believe in.



It wasn't a real marriage,
not in the ways that others would say mattered.


But, I took care of you,
pulled you out of toilets and street alleys,
dragged you home with bruises on your arm
and tattered shirts threatening to expose
your broken flesh, your wounded spirit.


I warmed you up,
gave you all of my money
that I made off of my art.
We were both artists,
both creators of something
bigger than us, no matter
how painful.



Oftentimes, I gave you too much
and you'd leave when you thought
you could have it all because it scared you.


I wouldn't see you for days,
wouldn't get a call,
wouldn't hear a word from you,
sometimes for weeks.


Do you remember your silk dress?
Do you remember before all of the pain?
Do you remember the clinic
and how we waited and how it hurt
and how all of our insides turned to empty
ashes to fall whenever the wind blew?



You came home and scrubbed the sheets
as if there was some unshakable dirt
inside of them and while you scrubbed,
you cried and I tried to stop you.





We heard the cry of our illegitimate child,
the cry of years we lost
and sometimes I'd cry when you didn't come home.



I missed you.
I missed your skin,
your beautiful dirty skin.

I missed your smile, your smell
your beautiful random waves of curiousity
and as hard as you tried to push the pain away,
you couldn't.




You had so many lovers that,
nights seemed less important.


I often spent them alone.
And when you came home,
you tried so hard to escape where you'd been.
You made love to me, you whispered my name,
shuddered in our wake.



Every moment about us was
something, something less, something more.









Nights in Autumn,
spent in alleyways.