The Heartache and the Loss of

(This poem is brought to you by walking in the early morning twilight,

And keeping L. A. Woman by the record player)

I never get up this early any more

Unless it’s in a panic

When my eyes open and it’s still dark

And I slip out of bed

It’s too early to have perspective

So instead I feel the full loss

Of all those stupid photos I stupidly deleted

Like someone’s mom, too eager

Trying to clean things up in a frenzy.

And they’re really gone.

What’s left: an empty album,

And flashes across my mind.

A chalky M in a mountain, framed just so,

A sort of selfie monogram.

California is already a haunted place, a dream place, a weird place,

A place for higher weirdness and high points, high lights, high hikes

A chalky M, walls of a room I stayed in that my mom might have

(She hadn’t; she and my dad just passed through)

Along the road, western light. (Like in Wales. I lost some of those photos too.)

And not only the photos, my concentrated memories,

But the love mitigated, or spiked, into likes

Ephemeral comments that I thought would be saved forever

Things I saw and did that I let fly by

That I didn’t have to remember because I could revisit

I should have put them all in poems.