an Outdoor Shower

I’ll keep this alive in language,
since it’s dead in form,
my last-ditch performance
to try to feel for what once was
so absurdly warm.

Placing myself in the sexiest, sunlit
outdoor shower,
as if it really happened—
though we know
it was turned off within the hour.

I’ll entertain your passive role
as my reader,
another paragraph
you choose to scroll and leave
for another.

I’ll let you see me without the pressure
to be anything at all,
your silent absorption
a kind of penance for my pain,
and the strangest withdrawal.

While I live, and write, and glow,
and you live, and write,
and fucking go,
I’ll wonder if you wonder
about the shape
of this stupid thing
we didn’t mean to grow.