Gina Myers

 

 

 

Love Poem to Someone I Do Not Love

 

You cover yourself

with another blanket

of snow. I wrap myself

 

inside myself.

 

You told me not to

go but I went. You told me

to come back but I stayed.

 

And so I gave you New York,

 

a pompous gesture

that went unnoticed.

The same as I saw myself

 

those final months:

 

a ghost in the landscape,

daily rituals set to autodrive,

& the slow fade

 

into the background as night

 

sank into night & you sat

at the bar & flirted

with everyone but me.

 

As if I could give someone

 

a city. As if you'd even want

what I have to offer.

 

 

Saginaw

 

Dirty shopping carts

in dirty parking lots.

 

The future I was promised

closed here in this

 

brown paper bag.

The hustle & flow

 

of a thousand empty

pockets scraping

 

the grey sky

of unemployment.

 

Who has forgotten

their sons, their daughters?

 

Forget my dreams:

how things were

 

going to be different.

Our single state recession

 

slumps into the new year.

Yesterday's paper

 

listing today's foreclosures.

My inability to be

 

what you need me to be.

My one companion,

 

a 99 cent cup of coffee.

The guarantee of something

 

bottomless waiting for me.