Because the couch didn’t mean anything to him –
the guy I knew in my 20s who hightailed it
every time a girl moved her couch to his place.
Because he was foul-mouthed and funny,
it stuck; I high-tailed it also, living
on my wits, always freelance, perpetual traveler.
Surprise! The couches now add up,
and all that indifference– things lost every day –
turns inside me –
clicking of a tongue in the strike plate
of a door frame
over-miked in the movie of our lives
mother’s house, door closed, don’t look back.
Don’t trust my nonchalance. The hard poem is yet to come.