This

Is Pandora's box -- 

The ever-dreaded proverbial

Can of worms:

After 3 years apart, we've both become

Sacks of sludge.

(Memories like unwanted relatives show up with the

Treacherous seductress called "summer"

Of us, life-making and love-making on these tattered

Flowered sheets.)

Remember when we were tan and sleek?

Shiny with sweat and skinny from exertion?

Remember when our spit-houses were saunas of sulfuric acid?

But now, his diet

Pasta, pasta, and more pasta (basta)

And mine buttered onions, preserved meat, and eggs. 

I am eternally sad as I home from window to window

With this sterility that means more than winter

And you, too.

Like fluffy, fat grandparents we shroud ourselves in shame,

Swaddled and shawled 

To the point of

Suffocation.

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More like digging my mine in silence

Until cavalry comes and I'm saved.

More like the wet gunk around my eyes 

Shaping

Into pearls.

More like the nude photos I sent that didn't receive a response

(An exquisite hurt -- a constant embarrassed confusion)

Or poems I wrote that no one wanted to see.

More like my parents, in the mean young of youth,

Conspiring against me (I was just a child). 

More like my greasy hair making an intolerably itchy mat of flakes and mistakes

On my head.

If I could, 

I'd unhinge the parts of this body 

That have turned into painful ash

And write them into a book, throwing

It at the birds outside that

Are so loud at six in the morning.

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