negative one

halfway around the block
i dug my hands into my coat pockets
for some warmth
and discovered one of the bright green
earth friendly, biodegradable, dog shit
bags you had given me for christmas
last year.

all of the others had been used
for their intended purpose,
then discarded into neighbor’s
garbage bins, alongside houses,
but only the ones far from windows.

after the dog did his business i reached
into my back pocket instead
for the plastic grocery bag i had packed,
used that instead, noticing the blue-green
hue of dog shit (from last night’s raw hide)
beside piney shrubs, marveling how well
the bright green bag would have really
complimented the lighter blues.

down the block i ditched the bag
into a neighbors bin sitting curbside
and shoved my cracked hands, now hurting
from the cold, back into my pockets,
remembering for christmas two years ago
you bought me a pair of gloves that hadn’t
shown up yet, which after weeks of no mention
i came to assume were indefinitely lost in the mail.

the last time we fucked was the night of my birthday
last year, when you came to visit for one long weekend,
almost exactly a year ago this first month of this new year,
and when you left the next morning i think we both cried

and you promised to find me a typewriter for my birthday
and i promised to visit soon, and to stay a while, and that
was the last time we really saw each other, and two months
later i bought myself an old Smith-Corona for ten bucks,
but these days my new laptop works best and the typewriter
is made of cold blue metal that mostly collects dust.

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