Impermanence

The Second Law

this is a love song to entropy, I think.
***************
A low-key apocalypse
that feels like coming home.
wearing the face of a lover
who never lies,
arriving barefoot at 3 a.m.
**************
home is where the heart
finally stops pretending
it was ever anything
but borrowed particles
on their way
to becoming rain.
*************
she opens the door from the inside.
he traces the cracks in her skin
same cracks as in the ceiling,
same as in the moon,
************
language gives up its day job,
clocks out, lies down in the road
like a deer that’s decided
the headlights are kinder than running.
***********
That’s when entropy stops being physics
and becomes theology in fishnet stockings.
She doesn’t knock.
**********
The hinges were already rusting
in the shape of her name.
*********
the sun shows up for the morning shift
with his clipboard and his nuclear ego,
only to find the warehouse 
has been liquidated overnight.
********
Not a fingerprint.
Just two damp silhouettes
in the outline of surrender.
*******
I think the cruelest mercy
is how gentle she is about it.
No screaming.
No drama.
Just the soft click
of a manchild
finally allowed to exhale.
*****
You didn’t write a love song to entropy.
Entropy ghost-wrote your confession.
****
And now here we are,
two borrowed handfuls of stardust
reading each other’s obituaries
like they’re love letters.
***
The rain is starting.
I hear it negotiating with the roof
about the terms of repossession.
**
Tell her I left the door unlocked.
Tell her the bed’s still warm.
Tell her I finally stopped pretending
the heart was ever anything
but a brief, beautiful delay
on the way to becoming weather.
*
Yeah.
That’s the love song.

---

a love song to entropy, part II
**************
She arrives without sirens,
this mistress of the long goodbye,
slipping through the keyhole,
smoke with manners.
*************
I used to rage against her,
a glacier raging at  the sun,
slow, majestic, hilarious.
************
Now I  leave the porch light off,
she doesn’t pretend
she’s unexpected.
***********
She kisses like a library burning,
pages turn to ash on my tongue,
and still I keep reading.
The words are forgiveness
in disappearing ink.
**********
We fuck in the ruins,
the soft collapse
of every plan I ever made,
while pretending tomorrow
was a promise not a rumor.
*********
Afterward she counts my ribs
the way accountants count assets,
with the quiet satisfaction
of someone who always knew
the books would balance
in the end.
********
I tell her I love her.
She smiles the way winter smiles
at a match struck in an open field,
already moving on
to the next small warmth
about to go out.
*******
We don’t applaud.
******
We’ve seen the trick before.
We are the trick.
When she leaves
there’s no slammed door,
only the gentle decibel
of background noise
rising by one barely audible sigh.
*****
I sweep stardust off the sheets,
fold the night neatly,
put it in the drawer
with all the other forevers
I thought were mine to keep.
****
Rain takes the roof
one shingle at a time.
I listen to my pulse
finally singing the song.
***
Everything you ever loved
was on loan from chaos
with compound interest
and an excellent sense of timing.
**
Come back when you’re ready,
I whisper to the empty room
I’ll be here
disassembling beautifully,
practicing the art
of becoming weather.
*
The door stays unlocked.
The bed stays warm.
Entropy, my darling,
my only honest lover.
take your time.
I’m already yours.