Is life treating you well, friend?

I must confess that I worry about your mother as well as your lungs.

Do you drive that old black car, do you dream of dogwood?

We were in Illinois the last time we touched and spoke,

and I worry about your baby.

Have you made a home, despite the stresses and realization of the falsity of hope?

We were both in transition,

making circles of a design meant to be cylindrical,

too complex for our 2-D capabilities.

How silly to think of you,

to think of the humid beach in which we met,

to recall the slow conversations shared over

white wine and pre-packaged supermarket salad.

The lettuce was never as crisp as you liked.

What of your third name, the one you want to kill and forget about,

the one that you so desperately needed to shed.

Are you still bound by the desires of your flesh,

the desires that bring you pleasure, pain, and those bad thoughts in your head?

Do you struggle to move your feet forward, as I do?

When the day is quiet and rolling to its close,

does your mind unintentionally bring forth

an eight second memory of the time our smiles intersected,

when our bellies were full of hidden doubt and expressed gratitude?

What do you do with that memory?

(When I am strong, I wipe it away with ease,

moving on to thoughts of tomorrow, thoughts of the newer blue ocean,

and the golden sunbeams that accompany him.)

And what of the days when the moment you open your eyes,

you are disconnected from your body,

and the back of your eyes is flashing my name in neon pink letters?

The buzz of the high voltage current pulses not only in your ears, but in your hands.

When you drive to work and your head fills full of my apologies,

What does your instinct tell you to do?

(When I am weak all that can be accounted for is the loss of my head).

Did you ever buy that damn jeep you always talked about?

And what of Sierra? Did you make her love you yet?

Typically, the blue skies and fresh faces here distract me,

but there is only an inky black darkness pouring into the window,

and suddenly I am walking outside,

going nowhere.

I wish I could see you, but we do not exist in each other's

todays or tomorrows or next weeks or forevers any longer.

You are in a neatly shelved box under my bed, meant to stay locked and forgotten,

but the spirit of past dreams keeps escaping from my head

and turning the key to let you out.

If I were to see you again,

I would hope that it could be like the second time,

not the first, and most certainly not the third.

If I were to see you again, beloved,

we would drive down to the beach and meander through the murky waves,

basking in the soft glow of a past that never quite happened.