In your last poems you are both in your cars

When I first read about your girl next door, traveling too,
I was scandalized by your confessional reference to her incipient hair flip.
Then I met her: dark bangs right to left across her forehead: so au courant.

I see what you see: railroads & detours through dirt-stained glass.
I know the dread & desire of pages that might as well be uncut.
Funny the roads we drive don’t cross, but the thoughts remain parallel.

I am writing to you because I am afraid I’ll fail.
I am writing to you because mostly I’m a phony.
I am writing to you because I cannot do anything else.

Though she never met my half look, I knew she knew how close we came,
& for that moment that was all I ever needed of her,
& if not for this she would be gone already.

Funny the fears we share are so different & come from the same place.
Funny the weather seems to sympathize with our dilemmas.
Funny we should have met from answering the same ‘help wanted.’

I am writing to you because I can, because you’ll listen.
I am writing to you because everything else seems impossible.
I am writing to you because avoidance is better than resignation.

I have given up so many times, but slow time gets spent so fast.
If we all drove in the right direction; I’d meet you both there.
That’s a fact worth considering, and one worth ending on.