Stolen Strings

Time proves you right: I am no good as a thief. Try as I might, I fail to steal your heart.

I settle for hitting grocery stores.

You move south to write poetry and fall in love with an acid jazz drummer. I never get why your poems don't rhyme, but I still dig you anyway.

Outside music stores, I scour the fading cards pinned in glass cabinets. Bass player wanted. I hang around backstage, and lift a Rickenbacker. Fingers made for forcing unlocked windows are repurposed to caress steel strings.

You come to my show; you’ve seen my picture in the local newspaper for all the wrong reasons. We kiss and, after you leave to make the last bus, I gun for somewhere I won’t be found — all tin shacks and parched earth.

In the cool evening, I watch the path through the foothills and sing your song. Only now, I realise that I have always been the victim.