Across the Universe

I borrowed your copy of Across the Universe

and never watched it

 

because there were too many expectations to love it -

I was never a huge Beatles fan anyway.

 

I never returned it

and you stopped asking.

 

Every now and then,

when I’m thinking about you

or cleaning my room,

I find it.

And I promise to

contact you soon, to return

it soon, but I got distracted

when you dropped out of

high school, got your GED,

paid your mother’s bills from

the tips you sweated for nightly.

 

I always end up

wedging it back between the

Spanish dictionary and my

Grandmother’s bible.

 

Instead, I’ll pick up

A Thousand Splendid Suns

or

Slaughterhouse V,

books you were never assigned,

books you’ll never read,

because you were busy

elsewhere.

 

One day, I decided I would

finally give it back to you,

the day before my graduation, and

what would have been yours, too, and -

Oh, how thrilled you would

be that I had remembered, that

I had kept it all these years.

 

I drove to your house, that house

rotted away in a cul-de-sac

of vines and broken glass, where

we used to play and by roads we

used to wander.

 

I stood on your doorstep,

opened the case,

and it was empty.

 

I stood there, thinking 

where it could have possibly

gone and if all of this was meant to be -

supposed to be.

I thought I’d ring your doorbell,

just to say hello, I’d come all

this way, but

 

I drove home instead and squeezed it back

onto my bookshelf.

 

Whenever I hear a song by

The Beatles, I always think of you,

and whenever anyone ever

asks if I’ve seen it,

I always say yes and think,

I should really return that.