When I see him in the row in front of me
with hair dyed like yours,
I can’t breathe.
I want to leave
and not ask for a refund.
You still haunt me across all these years.
What am I more afraid of,
your love or your abandonment?
That you will walk into my life
and wind up the music box again?
Sometimes I feel like Benjy in The Sound and the Fury,
as if all time is happening now.
You are always leaving me.
It is always that night
when you skidded the car to a halt
in the gravel
in the middle of nowhere
and yelled at me
and told me to drive myself home
knowing I couldn’t.
I am always lost in the dark
so far away from home.