New York can truly be so lonely.
I wonder, with knowledge of the answer,
if other places hold the same capacity for lonely.

There is maybe never anything better than words.
Except of course when they escape you.
But to describe, to visualize, to contextualize.

Some things seem to come standard.
Just a thing you know to do.

But reassuring myself is impossible.

Like trying to explain to someone how to swallow.

When you are the C to my c, you feel more like an O. 

You are so tall that even with your fingers hooked,
you can still hold me down at the tippy top.

In the quiet of your kitchen, I get to hear the way
your voice catches on familiar syllables made
unfamiliar through the filter of you.
Every morning, I blind myself by looking out the curtain
while you stay in the dark.

When curled your cloudy bed, the sound of traffic filters
through a cracked window and the lights arch up on the ceiling.
I get to giggle and press my face into a downy comforter.
You are so beautiful, delicate in a way that is strong.

I hear you, tinny, through the speakers.
I listen to you clear your throat.
I listen to your hoarse laugh.
I think about the last time I heard your laugh-
not through this, and how it's not all that different,
and not about the next time that I might.

I am drawn. And quartered. 

I don't want to think about when
I hear your words before your mouth moves.
I don't want to think about spilled dirt on a green rug.
A pot of succulents accidentally kicked over by clumsy feet.
I don't want to think about the yellow light hitting smoke
curling out of your nose, the night you give me that news.
Or sitting shoulder to shoulder, sniffling, but otherwise silent.
The sound of the wind off the ocean, smoking cigarettes and
feeling the empty space where he once was.
Like reaching around for a light switch on the wrong wall in the dark.

For it is not the place. A location is not that vessel-
I am filled with lonely, like a haunting.
I am that vessel.