David Franks Week - poem by Jenny Raccuglia

where are you David Franks?
I just wanted to tell you.
I tore my house apart.
boxes full of paper. words everywhere.
when I met you the first words you said to me were "what do you do?"
it was not a poetic greeting and I was annoyed by the cliché.
I held my wine glass up to you and said "this."
you were so excited by this.
one word.
I just wanted to tell you.
I looked for you. in the alley where you still lived without me.
with your words.
You were not a doctor. You did not heal anyone with your hands. No blood or bones or heart was ever healed by your hands.
Your words.
I looked for you.
For days for a scrap of paper from you.
I burned everything else not thinking.
About sticks and stones.
You knew how words could destroy, but you didn't choose that if you could help it.
You wanted to tell us what it meant, because we don't know how to really be alive. We were the birds pecking at the gravel for food, oblivious.
Where are you David Franks?
Not in my boxes of paper. Of receipts, or bills, or my wedding iCards, or baby announcements.
I have handwritten letters from FDR in boxes in my house now, but no words from you.
I just wanted to tell you.
I thought maybe I tucked your last letter, your offer of forgiveness and letsmovepastthepast letter, in a book.
Maybe I put it in Confederacy Of Dunces, you read it to me when it was too hot to sleep. Maybe in The Wind inThe Willows that im reding to my children. No, that's my life now without you.
And there are no words from you.
I really just wanted to tell you.
But I am just stuck. Boxes full of paper, millions of words.
But none from you.