In your absence, I tried to build a beat from the wreck, stacked your name in the stems till the whole thing clicked-clacked. Screen on scroll. Thumb sore. I drifted to strangers, found hunger’s a little con. Drawer full of arrangementers. Back at the place with four cats and the floor that squeaks, I slid a palm on the wall like, what was I even making? Now I’m all tied up in a little knot job, moon in the sink, me trying not to nod off. I move through after-hours like I missed the rent by a mile, show up undercooked, ask your eyes what that meant for awhile. Try to crack your code with shoelace math, chasing yes in the hiss, getting no back. I’m a canvas with receipts, bad posture, and a bruise for an alibi, re-sewn, re-wound, still mad at the why. We keep writing grief like a prank with no ending, barely a song, mostly wire, one red light blinking. So I bite down. Talk mean. Mouth full of rust. Make little altars out of crumbs and dust. What could’ve been keeps circling the drain in the wall, I’m cut off from your touch and still trying to call. Your no lives in me like a nail in a pew, small-town poison, me limping into the new. Now I’m under duress under somebody’s dress, thumb on the hem like I flunked a stress test. Three a.m. motel. Ice dying in a paper cup. I keep trying to behave. Keep fucking it up. Tried to solder a pulse from the hiss in the wire, came out blunt, flat, mean, tired. The beat still limps when I loop it back round, sounds like a door in a hall, sounds like this town. I tried to dress the wreck up, set it on a shelf, called it progress, called it process, called it needin some help. Same shirt. Same stain. Same bubble in the ashtray. Same loop where I talk talk talk and you still don’t stay. I laugh at the ceiling, then don’t, then do. Joke lands heavy in a room split in two. all that noise for a minute, then I’m back in your shoes. I kept the kettle on. the window cracked. Kept your voicemail buried in the back My hands know your no like a wrench knows a bolt, like a tongue knows the burn of cheap 9 volts. I’m trying programs 4 grams, make it say my name, turn the whole busted thing into something I can frame. But every version I touch comes back a little bent, smelling like old carpet and money already spent. I’m still here in the rubble with my cheap-ass charm, half of me gone, half of me alarm. And the night keeps pacing like it knows my face, I keep building from nothing in the same damn place. In your absence, I made a beat out the wreck, and it keeps on sounding like I came up short on the check.
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