I consider creeping out
before you wake, out the door
and into the road and down it,
until this place dwindles.
Do not mistake my meaning:
I do not wish to be rid of you.
I only need some nights to be
elsewhere. I have become
too familiar with these walls,
with the silences and sounds
creaking and speaking between them,
with the shape of my body
between them.
I will go out now.
I will go out and I will stand
in the road and look down its miles
and wonder how many I could wander
before dawn came up and you.
This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.
