Lately,
I find myself unraveling nights
in the fetal position, eyes clenched
because the room isn’t dark enough.
Morsels of light stain everything
and I can tell for sure that they are
the fallen stars of each ideal I’ve
been praying to in place of a God.

But the imagination knows my secret
password, rappels over my eyelids
and into my ears, whispering that
Pablo Neruda has taken an axe
to my plywood reality.

And all I did was ask him: “Do you
keep the reader in mind with each
love poem you write, make sure you’ve
made a copy before you pass it to her?
Are her eyes alone incapable of
giving life to your words?”

So now I pray to the man who
has no love poems to display
because they only survive
in an atmosphere of two,

and he tells me to speak to
you instead and to never
repeat what I’ve said.