anticipation

i cannot wait

for you to get home

for us to begin

this something better.

i cannot read

i cannot write

i cannot hear the music

on the stereo

or the neighbors

or the morons next door

playing guitar.

i sit and wait for you.

because it has been

a long time coming.

something better.

i check my watch.

40 minutes until you.

i think about the evening

and all the possible

ways that i could

fuck it all up.

and then you come home.

and somehow i do.

gone fishin

birds are singing

as i sit here

in the gloom

drinking wine alone

and listening to

the neighbors

air conditioner.

beneath the whirl

i can faintly hear

her television.

it is the news.

i wonder what is

happening.

at the same time

i wonder what day

it is,

how long i’ve been

sitting here,

and how it came

to be

like this.

anniversary

you call

from the swell

of an art festival

two days before our anniversary

and tell me you are lost

between saleable junk

and some hippie selling

his dog

and that you will be going

to a bar because you cant

find your friends.

that’s all right

i think

as long as you are safe

because when you left me

an hour ago

the feeling hit me that we

would one day no longer

hear each other’s voices

that everything we know

about each other

would one day cease.

so i’d rather picture you

alone in a bar

than gone from me

for all eternity.

John Grochalski, TNY’s resident Classic Rocker, is a writer formerly from Pittsburgh. He lives in Buffalo now with his wife and two cats. Grochalski's book of poems "The Noose Doesn't Get Any Looser After You Punch Out" will be released via Six Gallery Press in 2007.