Alone

I missed you
before you were even gone,
but after we had

parted. I
came home to silence, silence
of familiar sounds.

I wonder,
if I sit here long enough,
if I would become

part of this
terrace tableau, wind coating
me with city grit;

the spiny
aloe sprouting between my
toes; ants and insects

marshalling
themselves across my thighs, their
wobbly ranks running

rivulets;
the dragonflies lighting their
amber bodies on

my shoulders.
Even the bats would wing at
night against my cheek

then out once
more into the sky, restive
through all the darkest

hours, at dawn
tucking into a corner
of rooftop to roost.

--a good portion of this lifted from Karla K. Morton's Sailor's Delight