love
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Love Song — The Cure, 1989 She called at 4pm. I was driving, listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers on a YouTube Music playlist, when the volume dropped and a small message scrolled across the CarPlay display: Love Song. That was the name I’d given her years back, substituting her initials, because every time I…
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You believed in mepast my ability. I didn’t have it. I know that now. Once I begged for yes.You said yes.I rose. Once I begged for no.You said no.I stayed down. We made three.They carry us both. You were ground.I was light. This morning a dream:You at a door.I couldn’t speak.You couldn’t hear. Seven years.…
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***** a smear of days. a smear of light on the wall. the clock eats its own tail. got a number. a bad number. a cancer full of ghosts. google said: dead man. maybe. i thought: fine. i’ll just leak out quiet. didn’t tell nobody. told everybody. my boy’s voice on the phone. a crack…
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a letter to the dead… Hey Dad, it’s Monday again.I’m writing from where the cold snap brokeat 39 degrees, the mountains holding their breathlike a man waiting for test results.I wonder what sky you’re under now,if heaven is a temperature,a feeling of warmth after a long chill. Mom is okay. She still watches the news,gets…
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A broken clock is correct twice a day. It strikes true.Its hands remain motionless.Gears, sprockets, jewels, springs—all frozen. You and me?Two pictures. The clock keeps timethe same way you and I do— twice a day,working,doing time.
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Hey Dad!Her tiny voice—a small, blue birdat the nest’s edge.She’d remembered her way home,but her mom wasn’t there,and I hadn’t set footthere in years. Hey sweet pea, great to hear your voice.How’s work, your new place, your husband?It sounded strange—my own words,a slow fall from grace. Chirp, chirp, she went on,a new song I’d never…
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It’s 3:40 in the morning, and I’ve been here before. More times now than I care to remember.I wake up maybe a little before, open my eyes, stare off into darkness and think I can make out shadows within the stark black. I bring my hands close to my face and check—I can’t see them.…
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I thought how you thought of yourself as the moon— brilliantly white light, a dot of hope in eternal black. But even your light wasn’t yours. Reflection. And the howling below—that was real. Lobo, me. Smooth surface. You could trick yourself into seeing a smile there. But the truth: scars skip the surface, sink steeply—pieces…
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Hey. Hey, I said, and wondered when she had stopped saying Hi baby, sweetheart, well hello there—any of the phrases I’d looked forward to hearing as she tried her hardest to make the ordinary less than. I was surprised she answered at all. Ninety-five percent of the time I got her voicemail, which in the…
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“Come closer—let the room learn our names from your breath on my neck.” Where are your lips—with someone else,or only with the idea of someone else?It’s strange how the imaginedcan cut so precisely,like a scene edited to shine. Where is your touch,those secret letters you trace on my back?You smile when I ask,“What did that…
BB Grey--musings 