Monument

(After Green Day's Jesus of Suburbia and Franz Ferdinand's Michael)

Erect it in my name, take me to the park and run me right through.

I miss you, miss you like a bad dream.

Lean me on your tower and I'll drain you of such excesses that your mother will thank me for helping to re-birth you. Shift tempo, jump on my heart, snap a photo of us riding your rooster's uncle, then post it on the mirror that you look into everyday before rushing out to conquer the world. It's the same mirror you held up to our matching moles, to the faint red welt rising up to meet your mouth.

Are we bad news? You and I, separately, we make for hotcake-selling headlines, but as a pair, Ms. Graham would never let us see print. Cheap, bad, poorly written, that's us. On other days we are two tectonic plates colliding, wordlessly, without drama, without bitterness, or even hate.

I miss you, miss you like the cat who comes in the morning to feed off the empty trough, miss you like the chickens we slaughter every week for our daily tinola, miss you when I open the door and find that you're not there.