Crying at Kmart

I found you in the home care aisle today.

I was looking for a hammer but I found a bungee cord instead and it reminded me of that time you strapped my bike to the back of my car before I left for Seattle.

 And now I am crying in the home care aisle.

And I'm also listening to Gillian Welch's "I dream a highway back to you" which I suspect has something to do with it, but still.

It is raining outside for the first time this season and I can't help but feel like the city, the God, the something, is accompanying me on this sadness.

Most days I am so lonely I pretend that I am someone else.

In case you didn't know,

I haven't unpacked my apartment yet.

The paintings lay stagnant against the wall

and I keep tripping over them on my way out of the apartment which is sort of telling since these days I am mostly just tripping all the time.

A big stumbling mess.

I don't know what I'm doing.

You should've heard me talking to the cable company on the phone yesterday.

You would've died laughing.

You would've pulled me into your arms and kissed me.

You would’ve kissed me long enough to start kissing me in all those places that only you are allowed to kiss.

And dinner would be a little bit later then we planned.

And probably it would be raining outside because this is Seattle and it is raining all the time and we would be in love with it.  

And we would walk to Linda's just around the corner and have a drink and make jokes about each other and about the strangers and fall in love once or twice more before we headed home.

If you were here we could drive in the carpool lane.

If you were here we could walk to the QFC to buy our groceries.

If you were here you could be here.

In case you didn't know,

I don't think of you when I fall asleep at night.

I don't think of your arms,

I don't think of your deep forest chest,

or the shapes our bodies make side by side.  

In fact I don't think of anything at all

and now I have to go,

there are people crowding this home care aisle because they are buying screw drivers and light bulbs and probably they are going to go home and put together their children's beds or maybe change that light bulb their beloved has been complaining about and I change all of my own light bulbs

and I am putting together my own bed frame which is why I am in this aisle in the first place.

And last night a homeless man slept right outside my window and that is fine because there is barbed wire on my fence and I am fine because there is barbed wire around me too in some way. And I will be fine.

It’s just that I am embarrassed to cry like this in public so I am done writing now.

In case you didn't know, I don't think about you when I fall asleep at night.

I said, I don't think about you.