Church Street Is Burning

 

The Departed
The last glance. A brief glimpse. A closing door. A razor of light across my eyes. I hid in my chair. All around me, vases and pots filled with anger. Fingers wilting. Paint blistering. Cockroaches singing a Negro spiritual. Why did she leave me? The carpet beaten down. Years of footprints following her out of the room. Soon the rug was back to its original factory condition. I never realized what bad taste we had back then.
New noises in the night. Sounds that had been kept away by the warmth of her body. Windows rattled. The late night Church Street bus. The wet tires of passing cars. The wind pressed up against the glass like a cat looking for a lap. A hole between my thighs.
The darkness. A series of slides. Dali paintings performing. Time pieces laughing and dissolving in silence. A room filled with eyes. All of them closed.
God came between us, she was fond of saying. He doesn’t exist and you’ll never find him. And this obsession with this street. Church Street. It’s a cheap word game, an off-colored joke from a Las Vegas comic. Your emptiness sucks out my soul. You love only yourself. When I left a room, her voice hunted me down. You don’t want to find God. You want to find yourself.
I created a crossword puzzle called Church Street. It fell off the kitchen table and shattered into a thousand poems. One of the pieces was missing. When I went to reach for it, she walked out the door.
I have to quit my job as an elevator attendant. Seems to me as if the elevator stands still and the building moves up and down. I can’t keep any food down. It keeps leaping back into the lunch bag.