you stop knowing what you want the moment you get it

if it’s not the trains passing behind the house that wake you, it’s the long groan of boat horns on the river you forget is right there, cutting the city in two, hiding behind a tangle of tree branches and the briars that grasped fast to the hem of your jeans one fall and refused to let go. but sometimes it’s the bass from passing cars that rattles the glass in the windowpanes and the bones in your body and sometimes it’s the dog scratching at the door to be let out or curling against you for warmth. it is never the ringing of the phone or the morning stretch of someone beside you, the softness of lips flattening the bangs on your forehead and this, you remind yourself, is exactly what you wanted.

once a month, the man you were going to marry visits you in the house you once shared. sometimes everything is fine and sometimes he cries, wetting the dog’s fur with his tears, and you pet her dry after he puts on his boots in the next room and drives back home to his empty apartment.

if it’s not the trains or the boats or the bass or the dog shaking you awake, it’s the dreams where the guilt is so thick you can still taste it when you open your eyes.

Katy Haas is a poet residing in mid-Michigan. Recent poems appear in trashheap, Taco Bell Quarterly, petrichor, Sad Girl Review, and Honey & Lime. Find her on Twitter at @katyydidnt.

A Song for Katy