Do You Wanna Grab Dinner?

We could finish 2001 and not talk

through swollen throats, built and

broken by biting back the acrid acid

of untouched words

on my secondhand tongue

Can I call you in a bit?

And stuff your laugh in my mouth

to deaden my father’s silence

and worry what you’re getting out of this

is barely more preservable

I haven’t tired of the chisel

between my teeth

or tried to stop the wood

from charring, splintering into

“would I miss you?”

The chips make good kindling

for the altar I’m always throwing myself

over instead of my old oak bed –

maybe my father’s silence was a sign

maybe it’s not a wall but a monument

I promise I’ll stand defiantly distant

while I bite the torches and pretend

our monolith’s made of terminal shadows

instead of living, oaken memory – begotten by

beds shoved into the same corner of different rooms

So, dinner?

The roads are gross

but I’ll be careful.

See you in 10