small talk

The apartment is cold.

The walls, white, expansive, bare.

I have no desire to decorate.

Was it really just about feeling?

This place is new.

I drifted a while

Across states, the entire country.

I lived on couches, picked weeds on farms,

Caught up, I told myself,

With dear old friends.

Have my apartments always felt so bare?

I am trying to remember.

The apartment I lived in

When I met you

Had big bay windows.

I would sit on the couch

In front of the window

And write you.

You wrote back, in the beginning.

You said I made you happy.

At least the town is prettier

This side of the freeway.

The trees here change color

Orange and yellow, in autumn, outside my new window.

It makes me think of March

The month we met.

I was coming alive, so I could die

Which is just what the leaves do.

Anyway. All I’m trying to say is

The apartment is just the same, really

As the one before. Same kitchen, same windows ,

Same high ceilings, same sloppy white paint.

Or maybe they’re different

But I’m noticing that

Nothing is really different

Now that you’ve gone.

The apartment is just as cold,

Just as bare,

The space

Just as expansive as ten months ago

When I left my life

To fly with you in feeling.

Or maybe not

But the walls still stare back at me

In the same blank way,

It’s just as silent.

And maybe what’s different is me

Because I’m finally noticing these things,

For the first time I’m noticing

How quiet it is when I fall asleep,

How still it seems

When I wake up. I’m noticing

How there’s nothing here

That I’ve built or cared for

It’s all just emptiness and lack and

My own simple loneliness.

The apartment is cold.

For the first time

I can feel how cold it is.