I'm doped and thick from my last sleeping pill.

The door of the novel, like the door of the poem, also shuts. But not so fast, nor with such manic, unanswerable finality.

I laid my face to the smooth face of the marble and howled my loss into the cold salt rain.

I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here.

I have let things slip, a thirty-year~old cargo boat Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.

For the few little successes I may seem to have, there are acres of misgivings and self-doubt.

And I, love, am a pathological liar.