Wish You'd Tried Harder

You should know
that when he said he loved me,
I only said “I know,”
and when he said he wanted
what was beneath my breasts
I only laughed “My ribs?”
because Mama always told me
not to hold what you don’t own
so I loved them all with fingertips and open palms,
but you,
you were all-nighters on that intracoastal pier,
watching the sun rise between your brown curls;
you were the six-hour weekend road trips
just to bring me home to our inflatable bed;
you were french toast when we woke up at noon,
smothered in so much sugar and syrup and butter
that I almost made myself sick eating it;
you were the one who only pulled me closer
when I elbowed you for snoring.
I loved you by the handful,
pulled you into me
and had you sign your name just there,
but still you left me long before
I took my books and said goodbye to our cat.
Maybe it was just too much
to make love, hungry, as you once were,
for my closed-eyes gasping of your name,
to hunt for stars with me in conversational darkness.
Nightly, you slipped through the cracks
in my tight-cupped fingers
and pooled yourself into a computer-screen silhouette,
a shadowman whose love I might have dreamt
did the fingerprint-echoes not ache like bruises
and my heart not cramp
imagining another beside you on our bed.