when i wake up you won't be there.
you're (right now, you're)
going somewhere.
the doorway is cold and empty
because you passed through it
hours ago.
when i wake up you'll have left me.
all that time i tried (lay in the dark and tried)
to convince myself that stay
was a single-worded spell that worked on you
and that me whispering it all those times
nine hundred ninety nine times
for luck
was enough (was more than enough)-
it will all have gone to ruin,
it will all have gone to waste.
when i wake up half an hour will have been what you needed.
what you needed to take a train
half way
around the world.
(one whole hour and you'd be on a different planet. god oh god, baby. you'd be one whole world away.)
when i wake up you won't love me anymore.
my palms can slam the glass and my
body can tear out that empty door
but you'll be a distance too far for me to run.
you'll be the exhaustion in my lungs.
and nothing else.
and i should have whispered that one thousandth stay.
then i wake up and you're sleeping right beside me.
i wake up and your fingertips are real
and made of p.m. shadows and resting on my chest. and
your chin still resting in my hair.
not beyond me
but upon me.
i wake up and it dissipates- the train, a whole half of the world, the doorframe.
but i swear some trace of it is left on me
(maybe the tremble, maybe the moon on the waterless sea of my corneas),
because you say
right here.
and i say good.
and i say stay.
///
