I Can’t Forget You.
spray-painted high on the overpass,
each letter a good foot long,
and I try to picture the writer
hanging from a rope
between midnight and dawn
the weight of his love swaying,
making a trembling
N and G, his mind at work
with the apostrophe—
the grammar of loss—
and his resistance to hyperbole,
no exclamation point
but a period at the end
that shows a heart not given
to exaggeration,
a heart that’s direct with a no-
fooling around approach,
and I wonder if he tested the rope
before tying it to the only tree I can see
that would bear his weight,
or if he didn’t care about the free-
fall of thirty or more feet
as he locked his wrist to form such
straight T’s,
and still managed, dangling, to flex
for the C and G,
knowing as he did, I’m sure,
the lover would ride this way each day
until she found a way around,
a winding back road with trees
and roadside
tiger lilies, maybe a stream, a
white house, white fence,
a dog in the yard
miles
from this black-letter, open-book
in-your-face missing
that the rain or Turnpike road
crew
will soon wash off.
