I use to wear a serenading taxi cab colored sweatshirt with a patch of of birds heading south for the winter to Morgan’s house
She’d always laugh at the caption below
“Are we there yet?” and pour me a drink
She paraded her fathers den that reeked of nicotine and late night affairs
Flipping through the eclectic taste of albums
Spinning the quarter in the afternoon air
Indecisiveness roaming like a soldier
Morgan was the advocate of passive aggressiveness
Mumbling curse words and playing with a rubber band in tangled dialogues
Morgan would often lean in and tap her fingers on my thigh as if she was playing the piano
Slightly obtrusive and deliberately coy
Consistently playing word games with my emotions
Shouting “Love is fickle, but you could dance with me for a nickel”
Often devilish wearing a copper halo
Tossing idioms between stirred pauses
Blatantly ignoring the officer in the pictures on the olive walls
She referred to him as the man that dragged her from state to state
Leaving her in decorated homes with meaningless jewelry
Constantly toying with closeness and distance with my lips in the sanctuary
Shaking my head from the autumn perfume
From month to month my title changed from tool box to aberration
On that fateful hour I made the doorbell sing and no one replied
Glancing down at the welcome mat I picked up the ivory envelope
Ramblings were engraved and cemented
Paragraphs leaving a starry eyed melody
Entranced by the last line that catapulted reality
“The officer who claims to be my father hasn’t taught me how to say goodbye”