Staring contest

A textbook nihilist, sighing "this is anything but temporary"
Time absolves nothing, or something like that
Read on an oregonian bus, face flushed
Having spent the last hour cowering under a thessalonian letter
Like a poem or prayer
Pablo neruda asking:
Where went the woman you loved in your dreams

It seemed to me a simple question like you had been
What happened to the woman you loved in your dreams
Asked plainly to the plaster we slept in
To cast something worth keeping strung like a pendant
Neck shivered and cold
All your liver-rot jokes in the back of that bookstore

I left
Found ionesco's journal next

Scared to death of the curtain which turned him from
Man to eternal, absurd in the turtle shell
He wrote his present as past, asked
For reprieve in the key lights

I thought i might cry then

Two books of questions under my arms
Found you next in the fourth-floor photography section
I made a joke and you were silent
Tried to love, but time denied it

Rented a van for a night and a car for two more
Drove fast through the pot farms and gun store window reflections
Expecting a lesson in empathy
You crying your eyes out
And threatening suicide to the background sound
Of a city fountain

How do i not even think of you now

The contrivance in trying to break bread with futures
While sucking the venom in pints from our sutures is ours to admonish
Staring contests with honesty lost by our vanity
Batting their lashes to lapses of sanity

I prodded the trauma
Massaged what i thought was a sign to continue
Your bent spine and sinew
Oh god
I'm sorry

A textbook nihilist, sighing "this is anything but temporary"
No second chances once you've scattered the ashes