The brown-gray foods and nothing
blooming, the new year’s new number
he rehearses to remember.
Even from her city a drive away,
she follows him from room to room,
he hadn’t told her things, he
will write them.
Her life is like a Scrabble game
when you can almost make a word
with seven tiles, just one vowel
is off, and you spend your turns
trading in near misses, watch
the board fill with words, and you might
make a smaller word and give up
the big chance, but if you wait
for one letter that never comes
you’ll lose everything, and you rub your eyes,
can’t remember what winning is.
Find someone better than me, he tells
the air, the words stick
in his throat, he stares into gin.
If the clouds would just break,
if he could wake from this tired
bed, find the hole in the scrim.
He weighs the pen in his hand.