-for Leontios

I apologize for
this mountain
of notebooks and sketchpads
bursting with postcards
and printed emails,
Polaroids and cassette inlay cards,
highlights from your
grade school visual art portfolio,
tied shut with double-knotted Christmas ribbon,
piled in cabinets,
crammed into drawers...

Let them molder in the basement,
or read them, if you wish,
though you might find me unpalatable,
self-pitying and shrill;
a silly pothead,
nothing but girls and guilt
borne aloft on clouds of silken smoke
and far too sad too often.
But perhaps you’ll find in them
a comfort,
some sense of me beside you.

For so long the work of my life
seemed impossible.
I was desperate for happiness
to take me by surprise
and you did.