Erica Minton

UNTITLED

We went dark: seven months without words,
a couple of unimportant seasons,
a tall stack of newspapers. I was not unwhole
without you, though I can see why you might think that—
I tried to seep into you. I wanted to affect you
as I had been effected, but in the end
I can’t imagine the kind of things
that would now bring me to mind. Is there a taste
all my own? There were no songs,
we had no stories. There were movies—
same theater same seats same armrest—
our long history with dark rooms starting early. 
It’s all done, though the storyteller in me
wants that final fight— one with nails and spit
and words that would shoot past rockets
and be heard later, in measureless time,
by beings as uncomprehending as we were.
Instead I count pieces of days like coins in my hand,
remembering when they were more, cleaner.