an old poem with no name

My stomach is hungry for nothing but you
as I flip through a book of contemporary American poetry.

Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath,
whose words mattered more than skin.
Allen Ginsberg,
who I would have loved to fall in love with
if only he and I weren't both in love with boys
who made us scream in the night
and open our mouths, pointed to heaven,
to ceiling paint,
to thick air and the smell of latex.

One day I will be in a book like this.
Immortalized. Pressed flat between the pages.
You will be immortal, alive in my poems.
In my very handwriting you are alive.

Past Frank O'Hara and Robert Lowell,
still I think of you, to whom all of my writings are now addressed.
I think of how my stomach is clawing and complaining,
of how you are trying desperately to communicate
with me, your love aside from Austin, Texas,
where you are. Where you always will be.
Austin, Texas that holds you.
Austin, Texas that keeps me hungry.

One day I will be taught.
Eager college students will pour over my ramblings.
Pea-coated scholars will argue
over the steam of black coffee that I loved you, really.
head, heart, bones, limbs,
and tongue and breath and fingertips.
That I loved no one but an empty page.
That I secretly wanted to take too much Advil and sleep.
That I was too afraid of nothing.
That you never existed at all.
And they will all be correct.
And they will write essays.

The book ends with Carl Phillips, who I don't know.
His poem "Revision," which I have never read, ends:
"You speak first. And I'll answer."

My phone is filled with messages from you.
Love and miss and want and need
and begging me to smile,
to make you feel better.
But I am already abandoned.
My phone wants me to want to talk to you.
To send words from my pillow to yours.
Too many miles for feeling.
My phone vibrates.
I close the book of contemporary American poetry.
My stomach growls.