How to miss someone without a face

drawing by Amy Mascena

Chinatown reveries
in a thin
fake
heart shaped necklace
golden as the day fades away
under the painted nails
and the fruit trucks
all dirty
all rotten
like a bounty killer
for your cloudy soul

downtown LA reveries
in the middle of the day
with all those wax gods
to thank and burn because of you
for the longing
for the words you said last time we had sex
for the words you don't say now

white disturbing plastic dresses to celebrate
that we ran away,
dime stores in the old temples,
collapsing echoes of the Hollywood goddess,
red letters hanging pointless under the curved
chilly
California sky

Children with plastic machine
guns
ice cream
dried tacos for the preacher man
monsters trapped in the swallow brea of your huge green eyes,
the pounding smell of the lilacs leaves
under my nose
and under my tongue
the taste of a tanned neck

this is changing me
I have been stretching the getaways
until I found the bottom
on that grainy morning
through a window in Brooklyn
far away from this cactuses
this rosemary love affair
that stays at night and is tender
and carnal
and distant
while I close my eyes under the shower

now all those days look beautiful in silver
like an old useless coat
at the salvation army counters

those lonely hungry days
in which there's nothing to do but walk around
and kiss someone blindly
and miss someone who
has a boyfriend and a kid
and all her lonely nights and fears

manifestos of the shattered remains of the human being-begging-sleeping
and the melodies for the empty handed
sisters of the broken hearted
linger in the dense air of the evening town
full of ashes, walls of smoke
and whatnot