“Your oppression will not save you.”
—Ta-Nehisi Coates

On the third morning of this dark interregnum,
I awake thinking of you.
Do you recall our last conversation?
You were blackout drunk,
slurred something about Erzulie,
then begged me for phone sex.
I hung up after that.

Time passed.
We both grew up, quit drinking,
found solace in words.
Yours sought the heavens,
while mine never strayed far from the dirt.
But even that didn’t matter.
It’s all the same poem in the end.
All we can do is extract the sacred
from whatever scraps we hold.
It’s thankless work.
I thought you understood.

But now I hear you’re angling to
compose an ode for the headless horseman,
while I’m just down here struggling
to put words to the impending carnage I fear,
and I’m wondering, what the hell happened?
Which one of us lost our way?

Here’s another memory:
the first time you came on to me.
We’d just left a reading,
and you asked me to come home with you,
even went as far as to slip your hand up my shirt.

Ezra dear, I have to admit I was tempted.
You were the meteoric genius of the moment,
the Lord Byron of Baines Street,
sure to be a white hot muse.
But even then, I could smell the dark on you,
and frankly, you scared me.

I’m even more scared of you now.