So I think from that the next one appropriately
is titled Ex-boyfriends.
They hang around hitting on your friends or else,
you never hear from them again.
They call when they're drunk or finally get sober.
They're passing through town and want dinner.
They take your hand across the table, kiss
you when you come back from the bathroom.
They were your loves, your victims, your good dogs
or bad boys and they're over you now.
One writes a book in which a woman who sounds suspiciously
like you is the first to be sadistically dismembered
by a serial killer.
True story.
They're getting married and want you
to be the first to know or they've been fired
and need a loan.
Their new girlfriend hates you.
They say they don't miss you but show up in your dreams
calling to you from the shoeboxes where they're buried
in rows in your basement.
Some nights, you find one floating into bed with you
propped on an elbow, giving you a look of fascination,
look that says, I can't believe I've found you.
It's the same way your current boyfriend gazed at you
last night before he pulled the plug on the tiny white lights
above the bed and moved against you in the dark, broken
occasionally by the faint restless arcs of headlights
from the freeway's passing trucks.
The big rigs that travel and travel, hauling their loads
between cities, warehouses, following the familiar routes
of their loneliness.