New Mexico

Loving you was like capsizing into december’s cold ocean,

And it was raining, bringing the end through

With a bang and a cliché,

And I remember wondering

If this year would pass so I could forget

The whole thing, our orthodox mistake,

Where we drank black coffee and fought over

Who would get the milk, so the corn flakes were always dry,

And the little house always messy, that house

With the cobalt front door and the clay walls,

Rising up from a long expanse of flat. 

I planted the bluebells there, out in the dust

Hoping they would grow in New Mexico,

I watched the plateaus stay still and grow older,

And I met god in the dream I had for a month straight,

Where the sky turned mauve and bright yellow,

Striped and hailing down pancakes

Like in that children’s book I read to the kids I babysat

When I was sixteen, and they would laugh

When I told them that it was cloudy,

And they would ask about the chance of meatballs.