self status

we talk about how we do believe in prayer
and i feel like i've been in your studio apartment
for months. the ice cream has melted,
and i'm not sure how long i was asleep
with your book open over my face,
or whether you would have used the word
"energy" before, when we first met.
we met at the coffee shop down the street
it was a blind date
this girl neither of us knew kept showing up everywhere
and last night we sat on the bench downtown
where you first opened your phone and called me
to make that date. we kissed there, obviously.
it felt like two things
closing their eyes and forgetting
where they were going. it felt like a string
wrapping around a tack on some map somewhere.
i keep forgetting where i am going
where i have been has become a caustic
language i speak of in third person. a little
poem that only sounds good to me if the audience
is impressed. turns out the girls name is erin,
and just last week we saw her, dancing
when those performers invoked a storm.
i was supposed to dance there, too
and as i sat next to you, watching,
the assurance i'd once projected looked to me
like a piece of ice floating away with the cold rain
drifting or being drug from the rocky shore,
and i felt pretty sure i was neither
on the ice or the shore.
i would say i was in the water, but if it's cold enough
to make ice it would be cold enough to wake me up.
i have lost some status i'd given myself, or rather,
i am no longer capable of officiating self status. i am
melting from one to the next, the ice has gauged my
silence, and from one to the next i go,
from one to the next.