last

                              people
who watch the end of a
show on netflix many times
over to not let that moment
slip into where I'm going
where everything is always
being made new. I'm the one
who doesn't mind closing
the book but won't be the
last to leave but I can last
all night. You leave the last
cookie I take and take and
take care. Where you are
going I cannot follow. This
is the last meal but breakfast
where friends know time is
short and it doesn't stop the
minutes that don't last longer
than sixty might be all you
get.

carry

Always shoving books, crumbling computers into bags
to haul off down misty walks to continents worth of
coffee shops and any space that lets you sit and look
out of a window.  And what would this have been like

before there were headphones and sound, notes, vowels,
you heard reflected back to you.  It all goes back inside.
You carry.  Like the wisp of a thought where you may
have once read about how they tried to weigh a soul but

what if they tried to prove what you collect in heart/head/
synapses was heavy.  That beats from songs lodge in bone
cells: femurs, so navicular.  Upon stopping, it is impossible
not to feel the imprint of faint handshakes, the long press

of hugs goodbye, feet tangled under covers.  It all seems
so serious.  But that might be a chronic case of nine-to-five
exhaustion exacerbated by nighttime thunderstorms and
benign tasks.  Looking down, it's empty. Hollow burdens.