It Was Me

I only try to kill time
so that it wouldn't kill me.

Here, in the shadow of affluence,
the city waits in a deep ravine
where lives tick by methodically.

Their faces turned, expressionless,
climbing the cold step of a tram,
or shattering on steely waters.

Their throats clear familiar sounds
rendered foreign and hurried
and full of phlegm.

I wait behind curtains
the color of freeze-dried spring;
at some point you'll be back,
closer perhaps, though the distance persists.
It isn't you who's kept it this time--

somewhere over there I linger.
In the flurry of departure, it turns out,
that thing that kept nagging me,
the thing we forgot to pack,
that which stayed behind--

it was me.