Cartoons

I have turned your name
into a sort of music,
a jingle for a smile shop,
and lost in you merry melodies
I turn into a cartoon
stereotype. Suddenly
your skin is milk-cream
and I am a starving cat,
but there are no saucers
waiting at my midnight door.
After we say goodnight,
banished to the solitary
staleness of my bed,
my eyes spill under the sheets
looking for the stains
of you left in my mattress.
I linger awake, hungry to smell
your scalp and sleep-sweat
soft across my pillows,
clutching at even the giggling
ghosts we have planted here
deep inside the box springs.