Day Dreams and Welcome Mats

You come from a world that I have only tried to know.
I remember the time I sent you a drawing.
Eagerly,
Eagerly,
Eagerly waiting for your response.
It came.
It came but with such reserve and pause
a crime I felt I had committed.
So beautiful,
You said.
So beautiful,
Is the only thing I want to say to you.
I kiss the lips of a drawing I did of you, before I knew you, hiding in the journal pages between lines written by a younger girl. One with foolish handwriting. The last line in the journal reads:
I stand at your door.

I stand at your door.
I stand at your door…
I stand at your door –
I stand, hopefully, at your door…
I stand, uncertain and unsteady, outside your door…
Perhaps I’m holding flowers, shoes planted on your stoop,
Imagining you would feel like an old welcome mat in my arms.
Perhaps it begins to snow.
The snow makes me sad.
Coffee shops make me sad.
Chessboards make me sad.
Calendars, birthdays, parties,
Valentine’s Day, bar singers, modern art, tall buildings
Make me want to puke.
And so I do. Over the welcome mat, my shoes, your stoop, your white lilies I hold wrapped in brown paper, my uncertainty, and my unsteadiness.
If I can’t spill the contents of my heart,
At least I can spill the contents of my gut.
I leave it for you to find. So you know I was here.

I stand at your door.
Hi, you answer.
You pull my hand hard.
Now inside we embrace, you take down my hair, I throw the package of white lilies on the kitchen counter,
You gently trace your finger down my forehead…
Down my nose…
My lips…
My chin…
My

I stand at your door.
It begins to snow. I think,
Maybe if I stand still, the snow will build up around my boots, and you will see when you come home, that I never left.
I stuck it out when things got rough, when the snow came.

I stand at your door.
My hand hesitates in a clenched position in the center of your green door.
I turn.
I turn.
I turn away and begin to walk,
I turn.

Why did I turn away and walk home, like a white ghost carrying even whiter lilies.

Thoroughly exhausted I arrive home and wrap myself in a blanket that still has some scent of you.