Leonard Orr, Blank Days, Black Nights (poem)

In the dark my clenched eyelids are fringed with wild blue paisleys and it’s sad you can’t see them. Today perhaps you wore a retro- tie-dyed shirt, faux leopardskin bra, those long earrings I almost swallowed. It’s terrible I did not see you. My throat is filled with dust these days and if I sing a gray puff of ash floats from my mouth. When you last wrote you said you were tipsy. Sweet love, you can’t peel me from you: I am your skin. I am tipsy with you.