I recorded a song on the piano
I fell in love alone in the grass
I thanked the stars just for being there
even if their love was already spent
the grass was full of rabbit guts
the coyotes always left the stomachs behind
they looked like salted slugs
or little alien fetuses
I was alone all the time
I couldn’t afford any company
except the kind I didn’t want anymore
the streetlights were all burned out
and I liked it that way
finally you came along
I wanted to teach you to play
we recorded over some religious
sermons about death on an old Tascam tape recorder
all night we walked where dead lamps were just a memory of light
an opaque eye following along
the coyote trails and skid marks—
skid marks of life clinging to gravity
at the edge of the city
we finally fell in love and I left
for Texas the very next day
and now you are mine the way most things that were
once mine are gone:
I was tired of the self-seekers, the mental hospitals and antipsychotics, the
drunks, the hippies and the Krishnas, all the shared, cult-like trauma
holding us close for the wrong reasons
I could never forget what I could always return to—
the sound of touching down
echoes on like a dull thud
like a shot to the head
past lives are like that
I listen to my piano and I don’t recognize the player
I sell it to a Russian mother
for twice what I paid
By Walker Rose
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