that message on my phone saturday morning was all I needed to finish this, thanks.

I don't usually post drafts this drafty. Literally, this is the first draft of this, written in the span of a Metro ride and culled from my moleskine. It's taken me a year (give or take a couple weeks) to get anything down on paper about all of this. Every time I would write about him it seemed too emotional still. This might still be that but it's down on paper and since I need to get more things down on paper, I will take it for the time being. I played with my form somewhat and it doesn't quite translate here. All of the lines preceded by an em dash should be indented. Please pretend that the are because I suck at coding . It also doesn't have a title yet. I've been toying with this title: Everything I Meant to Tell You Earlier, in a Series of Poorly Formed Haiku but I don't think it works here. I'll come up with something when I revise this. Let me know what you think of this:



The spaghetti’s still in the sink.
The noodles don’t give way
anymore to water or sauce—
but break when forked
from the collinder into the trash.

—not so much of a change from the night before.

“It’s undercooked,” you said not at me
but at the strands, spooled
uncomfortably around tines,
setting down the fork and carrying
everything back to the kitchen.

This is the call and response part of you and me.

—everything dries out eventually.
—it was dry all along.

Were I to write this scene—
you and me and the pasta,
half in the trash, half in the sink—
the clean lines of the room and us
would give way
to the palsied scrawl
of leaving well enough alone
and the argument we never had
because we never have.

—have we?

Were I to write you
it would be all dead letters and brown
paper-wrapped pornography.
The address isn’t right, the postman
can’t make it out and it sits in a room
with the others. Sits waiting for someone
to make out your concussive Rs and Ks—
to deliver you.

—for thine is the something and the something (I forgot the words to this part. forgive me.)

The Teutonic was always lost on you.
Too hard-edged for your hands
or the hair at the nape of your neck
that curled in on itself when you needed a haircut.
Then again, you never could get your legs that high.

—you make a terrible German. I guess it’s good I never wanted to call you Daddy.

Were I to write you it would be just this—
your back to me, scraping pasta into an empty
trash can and turning
to set the dish, unwashed, in the sink.

—leave the rest to me.


10/18/2009. meredith jones ©