them

Long ago she met them,

But they were gone and dead then

They spoke to her

they listened to her

They read to her

they sang to her

they made love to her

She longed to hear them

to feel them

to taste them

To be high with them

to make love in return to them

But they were gone

She didn’t know where to find them

She looked for them

She looked in her high school

She looked at the football games, at the dances, at the pool halls

They were everywhere, they were nowhere

They were wearing leather jackets

Driving motorcycles, smoking pot

They didn’t love her

They were in coffee houses and they said fuck too much and too often and too loudly

She married them

She divorced them

She had their children

But she was wrong

It wasn’t them

She kept looking for them

She forgot about them

On purpose, and angrily

She decided they were full of shit and there was no them

She abandoned them

She loved another

And became angry when he wasn’t them

She ran away again

Going nowhere

She found them

But it wasn’t them

Just someone who looked like them

And felt like them

And breathed like them

And spoke like them

And said fuck too often and too loudly

And restlessly went away again

And she kept looking

And she found them

In bars and cars and motorcycles and tattoo parlors

And she found them

In jazz clubs and coffee houses and strip clubs and sleeping on their mothers’ couches

And she found them

And they hurt her

Because they were angry and she wasn’t them

And they lashed out and treated her badly

And treated her well

And made her a part of them

And she walked away from them

And then she found them

Dying and lonely and angry and homeless

All at once beautiful and black inside

And lovely and poetic and broken and had a reason to be them

Drunk and stoned and singing a song like them

And took care of them

And listened to them

and gave to them

and exalted them

and sang for them, and read to them

And sweetly made love to them

And she lost them

And she cried for them

And she loved them

And still never telling them

That she was them

And they were gone

Because it was never them

And it was always them

And there will be more of them