You asked to sit in the smoking section of a Luby’s Cafeteria,
Then produced a cigarette with a five o’clock shadow and argued its health benefits.
I thought we’d come for banana pudding and Jello.
I stared, tasting secondhand smoke, then went out for air.

I erected blanket forts over each of my television sets without you.
Forever channel surfing,
I tried picking up digital channels with an analog receiver.
You were my converter box.

There is a place by the water where, silhouetted by city lights, we found each other.
It‘s now a courters’ cemetery in the television syndication business.
TV Guide tombstones read:
Can The Love Boat rise from the dead as Friends?

I burned every word we ever spoke onto rain forest scrolls
And rolled them out on super logger trucks to find perspective.
With scented markers I connected all the things you said to all the things I felt.
My credence, that once smelled sweet, tasted toxic.

I thought reticence would be a balloon between your gravitation and my thoughts,
But, like X-rated movies with the smut removed, fiction fills the gaps
And I long for more substance between our poorly executed dialogue.
It’s hard to deal with unreciprocated consideration.

I grab two coffee cups on torrential mornings
And sit in bed, pretending you’re swimming under the pathos.
When you fail to surface, I imbibe cold frenzy,
My mind racing with thoughts of misplaced focus.

Your bubble bath is sitting lonely in its bottle.
I use it to make Confucius beards
And ponder what that netty-blue-mesh-thing hanging on a string meant.
All I can remember is how good you look in soap stubble.

Should I take an eraser to all the writing in our margins?
Was I illiterate, reading the wrong words between the lines?
If we meant what we said back then? How can I unmean it, now?
Is your friend suggestion the writing on my Wall?

When I Googled how to remove your red wine from my white carpet
They said, “Blot the memory with paper and pen.”
Combine what actually happened with how you want to remember it in a bowl.
Sponge the stained area with nostalgia.
Blot dry with clean reverie.

For safe measure, I consulted a Rug Doctor who said,
“Our tapestries are harmed most by what we can’t see.”

Our past was never black and white,
Maybe our future is painted in complementary colors.
As for our now,
It’s hard to think of us as less than lovers on the fray.