Hoarding

My truck
is a depository
for discarded garments.

The shirts and shorts
that kept me company,
now returned,

were first replaced
by the sweater of your housemate,
her ex,

and now the shorts
of your ex
and former roommate.

Have my discarded clothes
ever been testament
to a failure?

Unpacking

Inside the black trash bags
were rumpled clothes
and overturned toiletries,
half-filled sketchpads
and a bottle of cuervo gold.

You shucked those of his clothes
which had crawled into your wardrobe
onto a pile on the floor
and spoke of Albany
and the Marines.

Later,
when we threw
the newspaper bags filled
with his trespassing things
at his doorstep,

we watched him walk
into the house and
out of our lives for the night.

Packing

As we piled
the black bags of your life together
in the bed of my truck,
I made sure
not to crush the remnants
of your folded hopes.

As you spoke on the phone
to the man who abused you
in preference to the man
whom you loved,
I wrote this
and hoped it would
all work out.

For Mireille, on her birthday

Between the glasses of Merlot

      and Bodington's
we knew the words we spoke
     should be written
between caesura
     and enjambment

But we lost our thoughts
    between smiles and laughter
All we remembered was
mango sticky rice
               and poetry