I left unblackened pieces of my heart in Chicago: strung out along the shoreline; on a front porch where I once drank slushies; on a mattress in the basement of a house I’ll never find my way back to.

I brought home everything ugly about myself that I could collect, not wanting to pollute the sea I found in your eyes.

Years later, I worried I’d left something behind I shouldn’t have. There wasn’t a loneliness inside myself anymore, and I hated to think I left that with you.

Sometimes, when the song is perfect, when the sun blonds the hair on my arms, I think I should have taken one or two of those pieces with me.

What good of me I left in Chicago, was everything I had with you.

~1996~