ARE WE THERE YET ?

You only have to make her one grilled cheese

 

in the suffocating heat of summer

 

while still wearing your wet swim trunks

 

to know what it’s like to be in love.

 

And you only have to sit once

 

for a haircut in the air conditioning

 

with the lovely stylist to forget all about it,

 

and to forget that anything in the universe

 

ever existed prior to the small, pink sweater

 

now brushing softly against your neck.

 

In this world, every birth is premature.

 

How else to explain all of this silence,

 

all of this screaming,

 

all of those Christmas card letters

 

about how well the kids are doing in school?

 

We’re all struggling to say the same old things

 

in new and different ways.

 

And so we must praise the new and different ways.

 

I don’t like Christmas.

 

I miss you that much.

 

For I, too, have heard the screaming,

 

and I, too, have tried to let it pass,

 

and still I’ve been up half the night

 

as if I were half this old,

 

and like you, I hate this kind of poetry

 

just as much as my life depends upon it.

 

They’re giving away tiny phones for free these days,

 

but they’ve only made

 

a decent conversation more precious.

 

One medicine stops the swelling,

 

another medicine stops the first medicine.

 

Just like you, I entered this world

 

made and kicking, and without you,

It's precisely how intend to go

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dobby Gibson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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