Sinking The Angela Marie Poem by Phillip Erb

How would you like to hear me play a little number
With eleven of these ten unassuming fingertips?
Would you like to hear me sing along?
One tune in particular, or any thing at all?
Long as it is subtle yet strong
I won’t play any notes wrong
I feel like this is something that belongs to me
Finally
But open your hand, it’s yours, all you need to do
Is sing along

You sweat beside the fire
Then you spit in my eye
Just because I proved,
I knew you so well,
It was easy,
to catch you in a lie.

The in between you and me
Grows everyday a vast and salty sea
There is no denying that this place is ours
And ours alone
An empty bottle of beer floats past my splinter
The white man’s already been here, love
What’s new is the brokenhearted driftwood
Crusty with salt our tears have stained our lives and
The old tree retains the taste
After the feeling evaporates
You still carry the leather purse
I got for you from the old Indian woman
In exchange for my grandfather’s watch
Now there’s no one here but me
You use it like a rag to brush the dirt from your face
But it’s useless now, there’s nothing you can do to remove
Time’s tattoo and the burden of love’s given you a stoop

For a while we spoke through notes until
The water smeared the ink and swallowed our paper
You closed the window and drew the blind
After you and I stopped speaking,
you kept your heart, your soul,
Locked away in there just so I wouldn’t see
Not you sit there quiet and smile and cry
The tears fall over your lips in a stream
Down the skin of your cheeks your eyes
Don’t ever stop leaking and never in my life
Have I felt more responsible and
Empty for what broke