There’s a dark hole in the side of this town

but I can’t find it without you.

I was there with you one night;

you told me not to be afraid.

You laughed at the look on my face;

you said, “Don’t look now but

your upbringing is showing.”

You said, “You don’t really want to be here anyways.”

I didn’t know what to say,

I just looked around.

I stayed behind your shoulder

and watched from behind you;

that’s what a brave soul I am.

You just laughed.

To tell the truth I’m getting tired of people

laughing at me all the time.

Real tired.

There’s a dark hole in my soul and

it felt perfectly at home there.

It said, “Bring me a beer.

A whiskey sour, a margarita.

Bring me a roomful of burly men.

Bring me a taste of the cold night air.

Bring me a sweating table,

bring me a salty napkin.”

I try never to listen to my soul;

it lies.

Since you went away, I’ve walked

up and down these Mary Poppins streets,

looking for an alley with a

secret; looking for an empty store

with a room in the back

where a man sits by the telephone

and a woman with gold pieces on her dress

looks up at the sky and says,

“There’s a lot of stars out there tonight.

Get the ladder, honey,

we’re going after them.”

People say I’m better off without you,

that I don’t want to know about that side of the world.

They don’t know I’m still looking.

They don’t know about those little evening

walks with the dog when

she and I go downtown and stand under

the streetlight, soak up a little of its glow,

look for men who look like you,

check the backstreets for the door

you took me through.

They think I’m at a PTA meeting, I guess,

drinking iced tea with the girls,

talking about our husbands,

casting our eyes over the new principal,

blushing maybe.

Maybe not.

Once I had a dream about you.

There was something wrong with you in it.

Perhaps I’m beginning to forget things about you.

Was it something about the way you talked?

But it was almost you,

almost the man who spent his nights

thinking of ways to bring me down.

Enough to make me feel at home,

enough to make me remember the way

it used to feel when you pulled me close.

I never got the joke;

you must’ve been laughing all the way to the bank.

But it’s ok, I’d rather remember you as a hero.

The man of my dreams,

my Mr Darcy,

my Captain Blood.

Rest in peace, man of my dreams.

by Cher Bibler