It’s waiting on the bureau, as if you’ll come
and nose into the desiccated smell
of your old age and unwashed hair that leaked
into your cabled cap and headphone cuffs,
the sofa bolster, pillow case, scarves,
some dander fuzz clinging to the bristles,
with screwy strands of heavy-gauge black hair
sleep once planed to a flattop bedhead bias.
I strum my nails across the crushed boar hairs
to wish you back. You won’t come. I know that.
You won’t finger my scant hair and patchy scalp,
then smell what’s left of me on your gaunt hands
and sense the must of me, too, almost gone,
vaguely, as vague as you are to me now.
—W. S. Di Piero
Simone Di Piero’s recent books are a collection of poems, The Complaints, and Fat: New and Uncollected Prose.
