Excuse for Not Returning Your Text

The birds call from the vines clenching the church
next door but it’s the drums that clatter
me from sleep 8 o’clock Sunday morning
into that good prelude to the hangover
where you’re dopey and lucid as the young grey light
sneaks through the window without it’s  pants.

I have no girl with me, so I remember you
by your rambunctious smell, not at all like the perfumes
on the shelf of the Rite-Aid, your feral hair,
the wide wing-span of your eyes.
I click right past your text. Leave me alone again.
Alone is where we belong. We can give each other that.

She didn’t mean that much to me.
I’m not sure what does. I’m not sure anything can
in the delirious corral of this city.
You’re the last girl I’ve got to think of.
Maybe you regret that. Maybe you don’t know.

The D-train sleepwalks the bridge.
The Gowanus lays down and dies. The Hudson does not.
I am a Mummy in dirty brown sheets.
I turn up the volume on the birds and go back to sleep.