A Month Without Nickel
Sleep is an old vacuum cleaner from the 1950’s
The kind they used to sell door to door
Most now buried and the ones still around
Don’t really work anymore
And when I do sleep
The dreams eat all the floors
Until I wake up perpetually exhausted again
With no safe place left to stand
I miss everything about her
Even the things that used to piss me off
I miss her reverse Hitler mustache
And the way she’d leave old action figure twist ties
And other random shit like ham in the middle of my futon
For me to find when I returned home from work on the weekdays
I miss the way she used to follow me everywhere
When I was in a bad mood and she’s slap her paw
Against me face every time my face needed slapping
In that way she had
That seemed to say
Hey, we’re alive
Life is hard
But we’ve got each other
Cat logic goddamn it
We’re gonna be ok
I don’t have that anymore
I’ve lost my best friend
And that reassurance that came
With the two of us simply
Being together in the same room
I miss the way she’d crawl beneath the blankets
On the long nights when my mind was surrounded
By all the beautiful things that have left me
I miss the way she’d chase me up the stairs
And I miss the way she’d manage to break into the basement
And I miss the way she’d scream for cat treats
At the top of her lungs when she was breathing
Nickel,
I miss you so much
That I have a hard time believing that you’re gone
And fuck I’m so sorry
I took you for granted
When I took you that way
Like we tend to take
All the things that keep us going
For granted
You’re buried in the back yard now
And I’m whatever I am
And I am now also the backyard
You’re buried in me
And I will carry you until
Until my legs turn to dust
And then I’ll carry you some more
Because fuck it
Death cannot stop us
Because I refuse to let it
And I know
Wherever you are
That you refuse to let it
To stop you too
And p.s. also
Shutter Island also misses you madly
And says: hello
Multiverse Johnson 