Nonsense after all this time..!

I send you a letter I haven’t written yet and in it,
I ask if you still like me, which is juvenile,
but I need to know.
And do you still eat your eggs with syrup
like you used to?
Did your mother ever find out about the doctor’s
appointment?
I have been avoiding poetry as best I can so
I ask you what cartoons you’re watching.
And I tell you how I am always thinking
of your bellybutton as a place to set up home.
How I’d have an armchair in there
and three good books.
A photograph of you in the cream turtleneck.

I ask you in the letter what your middle name is
and how come you never mentioned it.
I hope it’s something embarrassing like Megan.
That would go some way to making
you seem less perfect.
My memory of you makes so much noise
at night the neighbours keep complaining.
The cops came once to give me a warning.
I told them it’s hard to put a muzzle on the past.
They sympathized and chastised my neighbours
for wasting police time.

I never really know what I’m writing
about until I’m at least halfway through writing it.
But in the grand scheme of things,
I know I am always writing about your eyelashes.

My therapist told me I should spend two hours
a day looking in the mirror which would be fine
if it weren’t the single most devastating thing
you could ask a person to do.

(Did you know my eyes aren’t level?)

Sometimes I listen to your old voicemails
and my throat closes like an aperture.
I am ashamed of how small my hands are.
And also how they are proportional
to the rest of me.
I think about your bellybutton because
it’s the perfect size for me.
I think about your bellybutton and then I think
of what’s south of your bellybutton
and then my throat closes in a different kind
of way.
My hands are small, but now they’re sweaty.
It was an honour to ever touch you.
I wish I’d kissed your stomach more.

I’d have loved you better if I’d been able.