the world off your shirt

i won’t wait on you,
but not because i don’t want to:
maybe i would have done on any other day—

that’s not to say that i don’t hate
standing at the train station waving at a departing train.
it’s not me, you understand?
in me there’s always an impulse to chase it.
just water, baby, to chase it. 

just water, a silent drizzle of impending rain:
it’ll wash the world off your shirt—
and i will smell crisp cotton again.