Track 12: What Dies Doesn’t Necessarily Go Away by Ed Ruzicka

We were in New Orleans half-drunk

and then I slept with the Stones on full blast

after I told you it was your turn

at the wheel, at the pedal over seventy

miles of asphalt back to our home. 

You took that to mean that no one

would always be there for you.

That the world is, as advertised

hard, cold, empty in the spaces

around any love. So you shut me out.

You shut down to me. The next day 

I woke up to your back. Later,

maybe six moths later, I paid you back

in spades when I took a simply 

luscious Goddess down to the lakeside

and she opened herself up to me.

Teeming black water, all that warmth

amid spring blooms and stars.

Now you are dead, not just

dead to me. Sometimes I go over

what we lost in all that happened. After all

for at least two years I was lost

in the vast blue of your eyes. Remember?

We were dancing in the living room.

Bonnie Raitt was on the stereo. We sang

at the top of our lungs, sang along

with songs we knew. We sang

at the top of our lungs, together.

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Ed Ruzicka’s third book of poems, "Squalls", was released in March. Ed’s poems have appeared in the Atlanta Review, the Chicago Literary Review, Rattle, Canary and many other literary publications. Ed, who is also the president of the Poetry Society of Louisiana, lives with his wife, Renee, in Baton Rouge.