Not Driving

A poem about staring too long into a computer screen, about not doing what you think you should be doing, about love, of course, and about everything else...

This is one of those nights
Meant for driving
Computer zombie with an eerie white face
And pale skin
Limp fingers
The light in spreadsheets on my wall
Filtered through cheap blinds
Where you once stood so I could take pictures of the shadows on your stomach

I should be driving
Lost in the quiet darkness of an old car
Tethered to a pair of headlights like the helpless string that must follow a balloon to Heaven
My mind a flock of black birds
Through this city and her dead children
The stars are an ugly constellation of orange street lights that do not twinkle
But vanish into my future and into my past
I never thought about love that way
Not when I was with you

An empty house
And no car to drive away in
I stand again in the window at the door
Watching an empty street
Blood at the corner of my mouth
Now dry
The smell of your yellow skin on my fingers.

11.2011