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I am hiding you in Chicago hotel-rooms, floors rank with monologuists and self-conscious singers, ready to prove how much they’ve learned by doing & seeing, which is how you learn—
I am hiding you in the camel-tan bedsheets, where there is no Febreeze or laughter, where I only go to paint the ceiling which has lately been never,
I am hiding you in the old Denver home, where I have been told to not get shit-faced on my first night of the rest of my life, which was good advice, some that I will probably take with a long swig of caffeinated orange juice,
I woke up this morning with a spider crawling up my inner thigh and immediately thought of calling you, beyond the airport and into the Southern Minneapolis Skies, which you are now wholly a part of,
but then thought better of it and tucked my phone behind some books about punk rock & the Vietnam war that I still haven’t read, where I hide the condoms, those ones that are still there—
I am hiding you in massive Chipotle burritos that use only the freshest ingredients and are still bad for you, which might be why I put you there, why I love guacamole and why I opened my unspeakable mouth,
I am hiding you in avocado burgers—
am I troubling you or is this just a really long car ride from Cottage Grove to Diamond Lake Rd, where I trouble myself to explain how highways are the quickest and most effective route to memory,
I am hiding you in Fort Snelling, where soccer is only sometimes played in the summer,
I am hiding you at the Lake Harriet Bandshell, even though you were nowhere near, it was the absence of you that made it about you, though I was wearing contacts then, you may not have recognized me,
because there have been nights where I do not recognize you straightaway, where I stare at the crumbly bricks expecting you to appear, with your name on my door that sometimes breathes wildflowers of May—
I am hiding self-limited expectations in the empty glass bottles of the basement, where the rabbit sleeps in the winter and there are no light-bulbs that breathe without wheezing,
hiding genuine glee behind the shower curtain, but of course I don’t remember that now because it was so early when I woke up lying on the floor, over a familiar bear skin,
hiding silver poems in the stake of the heart, unable to carry the weight of your public name—
I am hiding you from the schizophrenia of my math homework past midnight, which is a certain kind of trance, boredom and belching all the way to bed, except for the unmistakable faint scolding of well-dressed friends, preaching a very narrow truth,
do you care about anyone’s feelings!
why do you insist on these romantic misgivings!
you are making the world uncomfortable!
personal issues disguised as questions, but they do the job and well, don’t they?
I am hiding you in my shirt pocket always, because I like to prove myself poetical when someone asks What Is It That You Mean, or How Is It That You Feel, so I hand them a certain kind of love poem and they say that it’s sweet and then take it back,
but I wish they would stop taking it back.
I am hiding you in blank sparkling discs.
I am hiding you in dilapidated scripts.
I am hiding you in a promise of tomorrow.