the old Victorian house at the end of the street makes me think about you:

its wooden beams creak and crack,

like the church floors under our feet

to talk to Reverend Tracey after Easter service.

they call us sinners at school, we told him –

well, he said,

are you?

 

there’s a green coat thrown over the rocking chair on the porch

and i swear you had one just like it.

bought it in the winter of ’86 then never wore it –

i asked for it last year, a parting gift, i joked,

because i’d have bet anything your smell was still lingering on the collar

and in the cigarette burn on the right sleeve.

 

if i look through the top window into the attic i see a bed

with copper framing,

Stones records, strewn about;

Paint It, Black

the very song we danced feverishly to in your basement,

sweaty and scared of growing up, trying to suspend time

in records and movie tickets, poetry and astrology –

 

and it all makes me think of you

 

a house, a coat, a bed, a sinner, a cigarette, a song

chairs, coffee, the moon, the stars, home

and you

 

always in the door

you are always leaving