Maybe I thought poets could compete in the real world.

I've a dinosaur backbone, ridges knocking against the back of chairs like your knuckles now click against mine on my steering wheel, the cracks of our joints drowned in the faint scream of my brake pedal you say sounds like the fucking Black Riders and you and I are Frodo and Sam and you ask if the ring you gave me is what causes me to disappear for months at a time.

I am not an escape artist, more like a maverick of manipulation; now you see me, now you see me differently.

Have you noticed that my knees are rougher now, darker than the skin above and below (that she touched with warm moonlit fingertips on the clubhouse roof) because I kneel for hours, head hanging to pray to the god or goddess of self-control and it has been one day since it has been two years since she chose to lie beside me on the floor mattress. My own cold, sunlit fingertips traced her shoulder as she slept and yes, I noticed that she faced me the whole time, our bodies seperated by a streetlight's shadow and square windowpanes.

Steady the wheel again, "We missed the exit," and that's okay because I don't really want to stop just now, wait until the tank is empty and we hitch-hike to California; I hear they are casting real-life impressionable youth.

We were out shivering and J-walking and I threw my Frosty at the car that splashed us, stopped humming "Piazza, New York Catcher" when she told me she lost her glove and that her "hands would be lonely", and it was so natural for me to answer, "That's what my hands are for." But they are always cold, pale sometimes but more often a greying purple, icy numb pins without purpose. I wonder if hers are still bright warm birds tinged with pink and knitting hats for every new girlfriend.

And thinking of all of this is why you tore my hands from the wheel and we skidded into the emergency lane and the noise, oh, the sound of things coming to an end coming to terms and your callused fingers coming to my eyelids squeezed shut and prying them open.

2. I'm sorry. I just can't. But I know how it feels, I really do. There is nothing wrong with you. People just don't work sometimes. You are a very close friend, and I hope it stays that way.

It became increasingly awkward; you started drinking like it was the Depression and I picked up smoking like a deadbeat father outside of a delivery room.