Map In The Tar

I burst through a door
and climb stairs to
a friend’s apartment.

Did I leave my cell phone here,
I ask? You’ve never been here
before, they respond. And I realize
they’re right.

So I go back down the stairs and
out the door and start running,
face aimed down, scoping
for the phone along a route
I may not have run at all
for two miles back to my house,

till I realize there’s a phone
on my hip in a clip, nothing 
I recall, and this is not my phone.
No idea who it belongs to. No idea
who these people in the contact list are.

I keep running back to my house
hoping it’s still my house. Along the way
I stare at the ground, wondering why
I’m in such good shape that I can run
like this, memorizing the moonlit
asphalt as if I were going to be
tested on the location of each speck
of sparkle when I’m finally at rest.

I make it home, hit the doorbell
as I have no keys with me, scramble
to the front window to scream 
my partner’s name, relieved 
to recognize the reflected face
as my own, glad that she seems
relieved to see me, to hold me
as I go through the front door.

I am typing this on my cell phone
which was where I left it by the bed side.
I am typing this on my cell phone
as I try to get up from bed
on my stone heavy legs, with my lungs
torn and wet from something.

This may have all been 
a dream, it all may have been a 
projection, a mistake
in my perception,

but I bet I could be blindfolded
and brought to any spot on the route right now
and I think I could tell you,
once the blindfold came off,

where I was and 
what I was thinking
at the time I bent to look there,
how far I’d come
and how far was left to go,

and all of that would come rushing forth from me
the second I saw the map
of mica in the black tar.