Morristown Fiction

I broke your mug (the one
with the woodpecker)
today, while doing
the dishes.

It wasn't on purpose—
I don't think.

But when things slick up
we sometimes relax our grip
when it just feels right
to let it loose.

It's getting hot now
but part of me is
still on the frozen bike trail
kicking snow into your face

in the most playful
exhibition of fearing
terribly love's inevitable
dissolution.

Even there
in the horrid lighting
of La Rosa Market

where we warmed
with the complimentary
coffee
which all but melted through
the bottoms of
the styrofoam cups

your face glowed with
the ideal personification
of every moment
I've dreaded would eventually
burn a hole through me
and drain
out
similarly:

with all the cough syrup
and all the chocolate syrup
and all the syrupy Vicks VaporRub
massaged into my chest
by mother at midnight

draining out
like all the coffee—
small lakes of coffee—
we spilt on Sundays
like a ritual
and never bothered
to clean up
(also like a ritual)—

draining out
with every fluid I ingested
in our carport kingdom
before fatal
eviction. (The fumes

have been sucked into the lilac
lung and it is me—
I promise—
that drips there
beneath
its petals.)

Now
more summers have passed
than the number
that we spent
combining our sweat
into a rare
and potent
concoction.

Skipping across
the whitecaps
like stations
on someone's dad's
boat's radio

searching for a place to
land.

If I land
in some foreign
future
back at the
forsaken place—

with the length
of St. Joseph Street
breaking its tiny bones
to reach
Morristown or
Canaan or
the tongued caverns of my
back molars

I will scan
like a radio
melting in the sun
for an
identical replacement
to your woodpecker
mug

right in the place where we
found it all
the first time

and
you know

I will search helplessly
there

for you
as well.