Eight Days Without You
Monday:
I texted
you didn’t answer.
Whatever.
Tuesday:
I watched
A Streetcar Named Desire
and I christened myself
Blanche Dubois.
I walked
around saying,
“Daylight never exposed
so total a ruin.”
I drove two miles to
get my dick sucked.
I didn’t come—
I couldn’t stop
thinking about you.
(I will tell you
this story when I see you again;
if I see you again.)
Wednesday:
Natalie called.
She asked about you.
I told her
you were okay but
I didn’t say
it’s been two days since
I heard from you.
I did not tell her
I love you.
I did not tell her
I crave you.
Some things are
still sacred.
I turn
off the news—
Everybody here
is a fascist.
I call
you Stanley Kowalski
I say
I will not love you.
Still,
your name written
in fire across
my chest—
sweet Incubus.
Thursday:
I never knew
I could ache this much.
I never knew
I could miss anyone this much.
I never knew
I could be this terrified.
I am shapeless
without you.
It happened
so insidiously:
You
colonized me.
Friday:
2 a.m.
I am
in heat.
In five minutes
I will be
incinerated
entirely.
Saturday:
Loneliness ravages
like any flame,
red lunacy consuming
my nakedness.
I call
you
phantom.
I call
you Death,
last bright peonies before
the tanks came.
I call
you Heathcliff,
ramshackle house
of anger.
I call
you disease,
blood-borne virus
roughshod
through the bones
of the living.
I call
you atomic bomb,
pink slaughter
in the west—
I tell the walls
I love you.
(I write the sonnet
I will sing when I see you again;
if I see you again.)
Sunday:
Everything
is mythic in your absence.
Streets splinter
shards of memory.
Your shadow
bleaches everything.
This place is
useless without you.
The sun rises
severed head on the horizon
and my body folds
into its own darkness.
Masturbatory
contortionist.
My ears
attune to the absence
of your laughter.
Everything
dies in this silence,
I wish
you would call.
Monday:
Bomb-blasted void,
raw heart pulsing with shrapnel.
There are terrorists
in Barcelona.
I am overtaken
by love, that red terror.
My bones splinter
beneath its belted wheels.
Do you care
if I survive?
Do I care
if you die?
(I will burn this
poem when I see you again;
if I see you again.)
Shamar Harriott is a Jamaican writer living in South Florida. He is the recipient of the 2017 Debra Vasquez Memorial Award for Excellence in Poetry. His work can also be found in Panku and Vagabond City. He likes mermaids and Joni Mitchell.