It's around three in the morning when it occurs to me--
It's always around three in the morning.

Like that night I couldn't sleep at her apartment--
We pulled aside the headboard that wasn't mounted down
and propped it against the wall so we wouldn't disturb the neighbors.

She filled her apartment with the trappings of Best Buy and IKEA,
Old college textbooks from her time as an undergrad studying African Anthropology,
Everything from diseases and diaspora to sex and sectarian violence

And I keep wondering just
how the hell I keep getting
myself into these positions.--

It's been about a year ago since my other girlfriend left me,
The blonde, where I went from staying awake at three in the morning
Wondering who I was and where and whether I fit in her world

To staying awake at three in the morning wondering whether it even
mattered.  Up to that point, I was happy to place my identity in someone else's hands.
And for the past year, I've been furiously trying to glue together

Whatever's left of myself into anything resembling an identity
Though it just comes out to look like something a third grader drew,
Complete with tanks and bombs and airplanes and stick figure girls

With anatomically incorrect tits.

Or it's around three—It's always three in the fucking morning—and I'm
at home and it's silent like an empty street, outside it's black as pitch, and
my bed's either occupied with someone else or it's not and anyway

Who really cares except that since it all came undone, God, Prayer Meetin's,
Music, Poetry, Alpharetta, Atlanta, online dating, falling in love and casual sex,
I've been crawling out of the wreckage every day for a year,

Desperately struggling to figure out who the hell I am, where the hell
I've landed, and what the hell I'm going to do about it, I realize that
I'm gloriously free and I wouldn't have it any other fucking way.