Magical Thinking

I tried to let you go in the bathroom stall of a comedy club on MacDougal Street with a man with guitar player hands.  I tried to let you go on the bar stool of an Irish Pub afterhours, with the bartender who tasted like Stella Artois.  I tried to let you go in the back of a candlelit Soho restaurant.  I try to loosen my grip on you with gin and cigarettes.  But it’s just an idea.  It’s hard to let an idea go.  The idea of you floats up from the bottom of a cocktail glass, slides across my tongue easier than any stranger’s kiss.  The idea of you looks back at me when I open my eyes to watch someone else’s face against mine. (Is this what is means to see other people?)  At 4a.m. on a Monday, I stumble over the idea of you as I fall alone into my bed.  You said, “What are we without our ideas?”  And I think about love.  I can repeat the same conversations I had with you with men who look at me with starved fox eyes, but it doesn’t spark anything for me.  I can have great bad ideas, but they pass like a hangover and it’s onto the next one.  What are we without our ideas?  What am I with mine?  What ideas are you having these days?