Tonight our eyes are fixed on fixing
Up the sky.  We've worked too hard too long
To pass each other by like week-
Old tissue paper on the counter in my
Kitchen where we cooked up pasta and
Spaghetti sauce from a jar I bought.
Coursing through my veins, you claimed
A portion of dessert.  I fixed your
Artichokes back in September.  Then we swam
Away like lemmings on the go.
A trembled lip, a bracelet made of weeds,
The garden whimpers through the night.
Perhaps we didn't feed the cat, or
Invite the neighbors back again for supper
But I never gave a damn, I guess.
It seems like time is taking us forever.

My spelling never was the best.
But these days noone notices
the misplaced vowell or consonant.
There were no nouns, no adjectives.
You were a verb in present tense.

Thursdays are like caramel: Sticky but
Delicious.  Free like strands of candy in the wind.
It was a Thursday when I met you.
No, I take that back.  I haven't met you yet.
But when I do, this poem will have been
Long since published, analyzed, and burned.
Perhaps you'll find me hanging from a tree.
Hanging onto words like Reynold's plastic
Wrap.  Clinging on the evening like a moth.
The glossy metaphor is mirrored in the language
Of the sky.  Unravelling the meaning of a vowell:
I strike down the contrast of an I.
Dismantling the borders of my self.

-Neal Miller, 1994