Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?
                                                                                             -Psalm 139:7

You take me to the black pavement, gravel
crumpled into bits and plastered together
with golden lines in between pairs of
blurry sneakers.
You lead me to vacant bleachers with wetness
pooling on the striped gray metal – phantom
quarterbacks, pom-poms lifting up
like spiders
on an invisible thread, bobbing up and down
before the misty gray sky.
You let me break apart in a university office,
scattered like the chunks of ambiguous
black plastic over the carpet, pushed farther
and farther apart
every day by the rolling wheels of these chairs.
I say “It’s over” for the seventy times seventh time.
I pack my memories into a ripped cardboard box
plastered together with four layers of Scotch tape.
You are in the office sweeping up my shattered plastic,
your sneakers with the cat-chewed laces are sitting on
the chair,
I hear you humming the notes that I walked through,
step-by-step, in the vacant football field,
when I thought you were a stormchaser
and not a friend.