After some consideration, I’m posting one more, section 2 of a longer poem, structured around a frankly pretty lousy video game. This section was published a few years ago in the Food issue of the Crab Orchard Review. Hope you like it! I made it myself.

2. Bog Town

Two years ago, think of it, I was in Vienna

With the snow outside the windows,

My life incomprehensibly charmed.

We lay on our backs and touched hands

Across the epic white of the double bed.

Somehow I had thought this story,

when I told it, would have some greater weight,

But here we go, let me drop it

The way he dropped the letter today

Onto the pile of discards, acknowledging

The sentence we inflicted on each other.

Word by word and finally lightly,

our deliberate, casual goodbye.

The snow outside lay on everything and the day

Was Epiphany, and Mariahilferstrasse lay empty

As the Austrians lay inside as we lay inside

Touching hands on the double bed.

The cake cost us thirty dollars, a Sachertorte

Freshly rich from the Hotel Sacher.

We opened the box, parted its nest of excelsior,

Sliced out two pieces, began to eat

Inconsequentially. How did two years pass by?

The jam smeared our fingers, scenting us with apricot.

The chocolate smeared our fingers,

Lacing itself into our freedom.

I did not feel free. I can't believe now

That it has been two years since my fingers trailed

Across my body, writing onto it in sugar

My desire for decadence.

His mouth went on filling with torte,

The chocolate went on sliding through his body

Veining him like a leaf, as love might,

As we were tangled throughout each other

As roots grow around dead earth,

As bees crawl blindly through their homes.

I think sometimes, Oh, darling,

How did this happen to us? Looking at the room,

Remembering the snow that lay outside

And crushed us into our dreams.

He would not mouth me clean, he would not lick my body

in the small comfort that animals give as love.

The color he would teach me later again, indelibly.

Here is the bathroom where I washed myself clean.

He said nothing as I walked back over to the bed

And lay down beside him again. Eating cake,

He said nothing and then closed the box and said to me,

Are you done, let's go to bed.

And I went. It's been two years and I cannot fathom

How sorry he would have been, if ever, that I cried.

Now, of course, it's too late.

He came over today and I stood awkward in the doorway

As he looked over my shoulder at the room we had shared.

The pieces of the life we had are slowly disappearing.

I brought him the bag and he sorted them into piles,

The pieces worth keeping, the pieces we'll forget.

Remember the snow and the taste of apricots.

Has he forgotten that we made love and he licked me

And that it was already too late for us, because two years later

He will be sorting a pile of his old things on the table

And then we will toss off goodbyes like crumpled letters.

Tomorrow is a working day again. Forgive me, I've lapsed--

Here is the story we've been missing.

Frogger makes his way through Bog Town.

There is nothing here but the possibility

Of catching a ride to another town,

And to get to the next place requires honey.

And there are two ways out of this place. First,

Speak kindly, bargain, work things out.

The bees will give you honey if you ask for it nicely.

They will offer it over and over again.

Second, the shortest path. Scream your way out.

Hurt the bees enough and they will give up.

There is the honey and the story ends here,

The same always: bring your honey to the bear,

And ride on out on his cable car.

Inconsequential. There are always these transitions

Where it seems like the world will end,

But they are, after everything goes on, transitions.

Years pass inconsequentially and you realize

That the way they passed was inconsequential too.

How much would my present have changed

Without him there? How much will it matter

That I was free in Vienna, but bound in this time?

Frogger makes his way to the riverboat

If the bees live or if they die. There was a future for me

That lay waiting here regardless of whether,

in the end, we had fought or we had tried.

As it is, we became separate. And if I toss off another story

Of fighting for the sweetness that might have saved us,

The last day in San Francisco that his breath warmed me,

The night I walked away into someone else's kiss,

It will make no difference at all, for here I am at the crossing,

The riverboat before me, the sun beating down,

No way back and no way forward but this.

It's been two winters since Vienna. That cake is long gone.

Somewhere in Bog Town, some bear or some man

Looks up, thinking of me, and licks his lips,

Caught in his slow memories of sweetness.