I Sit At My Desk Alone

I sit at my desk alone as I did on many Sunday afternoons when you came back to me, your arms aching for me, though they smelled of other women and your sweet head bowed for me to rub and your heart bursting with things to tell me, and your hair and your eyes wild. We would embrace on the carpet and leave the imprint of our bodies on the floor. My back is still sore where you pressed me into the rug, a sweet soreness I would never lose. I think of you always on Sunday afternoons, and I try to conjure you with these words as if you might come back to me at twilight but you are never coming back never. The truth is you no longer exist. Oh you walk the world sturdily enough: one foot in front of the other. But the lover you were, the tender shoot springing within me, trusting me with your dreams, has hardened into fear and cynicism. Betrayal does that betrays the betrayer. I want to hate you and I cannot. But I cannot love you either. It is our old love I love, as one loves certain images from childhood shards shining in the street in the shit. Shards of light in the darkness.