A poem about sunrises and fools…

Ship Gray

I miss sunrises and I miss you.

Tell myself that it had to happen

as one does to get through.

I must have known, somehow,

I’d be singing your blues.

In my baby-eyed blindness,

I must have known you for you.

What a little know-it-all, what a little fool.

I miss muggy afternoons and I miss you.

I do, I do, I do.

Watched you crown yourself on a liar’s stoop

in a liquor store six hours before twenty-two.

Can’t help but think,

that’s what makes me just a bit better than you.

What kind of man? What kind of man?

I’ll ask what I could not, then —

What kind of man? What kind of man

takes something so golden,

so simple, so notably spring dumb?

Goddess whispers in your defense,

“He doesn’t know what he’s done.”

I keep asking,

“What kind of man? What kind of man?”

But that man is you.

What a little know-it-all, what a little fool.

I miss cold coastal sunrises and I miss you.

Heaven knows I’ve spent too much time

in consultation with the moon.

Did you know she only ever spoke of you?

What a joke, what a joke —

I laugh so I don’t cry, I laugh while I ask,

What kind of heart? What kind of man

calls a girl to him to steal her from land just because he can?

What kind of man? What kind of man?

I’d ask you to justify it, but I know that you can’t.

I missed the azaleas, but I miss you.

I miss cards on the table, gambling like I couldn’t lose.

I miss you, I miss you, I miss you.

I miss my red hair.

I miss the fire.

I miss the fight.

Raised my hands just above the water, baptized.

Face broken, heart restless, breathless, rotten.

Tell me how I forgot I was someone’s dutiful daughter.

Dutiful lover, dutiful heart.

I miss me but I miss you, too.

Rest in peace little know-it-all, little fool.