North and Damen

North and Damen -- thought I saw you walking

Across the street, arm draped in the crook of some

Indie rocker’s elbow, he had tousled hair,

A hat cocked off to the side, the typical style

Of the legions of sour faced hipsters in my beloved

Wicker Park

neighborhood.

 

My co-worker in the driver’s seat of his Passat

Kept speaking while I dropped out of the conversation.

“You’re so quiet!” he said. “What happened? Everything ok?”

This is the part of the poem where I usually

ruin things (usually with a fart joke) but please,

bear with me just this once.

 

Floodgates opened. Memories, like giant waves came

Crashing down and I gasped, floundering in air.

The inside of a Passat can seem like a coffin

when you voluntarily

stop breathing.

 

Are you still thinking of me?

Are you happy?

I trembled in the car seat.

The bottom dropped out of my life

Right in front of my eyes.

Here’s the caveat:

There was never any you. I never had you to begin with.

You are just a memory of something that never was.

There were no floodgates. I made that up.

I am a fucking loser.

I sit in goddamn coffee houses at night

pretending I have comfort

in the company of strangers.

 

I keep the television blaring through quiet hours

celebrities chattering away in the darkness hoping

to scare away the shades and shadows

that are always snapping at my heels.

 

The worst part is that

This all really happened today.

I am sitting here alone

Writing a poem about some girl

Who only really lived

In the fringes of an old life

And never in this one.