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I want to tell you about love
And loneliness.
                        —Madonna

The song changes
and I can’t listen.
Can you?  I’ve been
sitting here for days waiting
on everything.  But nothing
comes.  Not you.  Not a box.
Not you in a box.  No car.
No fender bender.  No
tow truck.  No howling
winds.  Nothing gets
here but summer.  

Not a promise that

can be broken.
And furthermore,
by the time it arrives,
everything’s over.

Is everything over?
Summer is here.

The end.  Done.

But this is not
what I am here
to tell you tonight.
Tonight, in the un
sleepable quiet,
I want to tell you
about love, loneliness

and desire, which, 

when it comes, sits in
solitude—in a rec
eptacle of loneliness—
is a darkness that can

undo.  To whom can one
speak in such a place as this?  

A decade hap
pens.  Or a heart
attack.  Where are
you?  And your kitty-

cat photos that come in
the mail (i.e., the phone,
the old laptop), covered,
blanketed almost,
with I miss yous.
And yet, nobody, no box,
no blank check.  That
last part I got from the
song that just changed,
and then again I got from
the song that came after
that.  Almost every song
tells me there is a blank
check arriving.  Or, mostly,
that there is cash.  Lots of cash.
Lots of love.  Lots of shopping;
what’s called—in the
song now playing—that just shot
through the Aurora Borealis and onto
my head just now, radio waves
with yet another promise to some-
how contend with, retail therapy?
It has been promised.  And I
am afraid I know where all
of the promises go.  So if you 

do arrive, will it have been 

necessary?  Will the arrival 
have currency; or whatever
the lion was missing that
motivated him to somehow
join the others on their
way to the Wizard of Oz?  

Forget it.  Forget love.  Or else 

I have.  I forget it anew, my head,
hurting, having another
piece ripped, as if strategically,
from memory.  Something
as impossible as walking down
Sixth Street from Market.  Al-
most two blocks.  And climb
ing the stairs to the fourth
floor, where you’d find a

door on which the number
424 is stencilled.  Open it
and you’ve found my
box.  I think you missed
our moment.  I dreamt that I
had it.  Yep, we most certainly 

missed our moment.  Your
moment is gone.  My
moment lasts, it seems.
Or else I am exaggeration,

a short film of a ceramic heart

shown on the screen in a small
theater, slowing through time

(perhaps the film strip
breaks before the heart
hits the ground and
crashes into inexplicable
beauty).  I forgot beautiful
when I thought it was you
that I lost.  But I’d forgotten

deadlines, too.  So now that
I am reliving this gor
geous life every single
day—every single day
this gorgeous life—
it doesn’t matter
that you’ll never
arrive.  Whoever comes
first, I think.  That may be 

alright.  So.  I am almost all 

the way to Howard Street.  On

the left.  175 Sixth.  Yes.
You must climb the stairs
because the elevator
is always dead—like you 

must be now that I am

almost beautiful again—
all the way to the fourth
floor.  No, I will not pick
you up at the airport to-
morrow.  But I will see you
when I get here (when I get here). 

Now that I am finally almost where I belong.