This poem is a 'What If' story to Shirley's song - I Who Had Nothing
I. I Who Had Nothing
I told him love would be enough -
that hollow knife I wore like jewelry,
that wind that stripped bone bare.
I believed it, foolishly,
as though hunger were a kind of grace,
as though ache could crown the living.
We married in a thrift-store suit,
its seams stitched with want and dream.
No guests, no flowers - only the wind
and a match that refused to light.
Even silence was costly then;
even joy smelled faintly of rust.
Now we live above the gas station -
air thick with fumes and memory.
I paint my lips each morning
as if red could hide the gray beneath.
The wallpaper curls like apology.
The ceiling drips its quiet grief.
At night he sings the old songs -
the ones that once undressed me.
Now his voice crawls slow through the dark,
and I roll away, the sheet between us
a border no country will claim.
I gave him love, and he gave it back -
a poor carpenter, our devotion,
building no walls, fixing no roof,
too proud to beg, too tired to stand.
Sometimes I dream we stayed poor and happy,
but dreams now smell of gasoline,
of matches burnt before their spark.
He said love would be enough -
but hearts, left still too long,
forget to beat.
_______________
II. I Who Took Everything
I gave her everything I didn’t have -
songs, hunger, trembling hands,
the ache that made me sing at all.
She called it passion once.
I thought that holy -
but holy things rot if left alone.
We live above the station.
Neon hums OPEN all night,
bright as an accusation.
She looks down on cars that gleam,
on men who never smell of oil.
And I write songs that never sell -
lyrics bleeding through thin paper
like confessions no priest will read.
Love is a match; life, a wind.
We tried to build a home from both,
but smoke is poor mortar.
Now the walls laugh,
and our mouths taste like ash.
I see her wonder sometimes -
what life might have been
with silver spoons, silk sheets,
a quieter kind of loneliness.
Still, she stays.
And I stay.
And that, too, is love -
the kind that starves together,
believing it’s full.
_______________
III. Left With Less Than Nothing
The apartment is empty now -
only the hum of the sign below
and the ghost of his breathing
still trapped in the walls.
I cook for one,
the smell of oil climbing skyward,
the air heavy with what we could not fix.
Every rattle of the window
feels like a voice trying to return.
I imagine the man I didn’t choose -
his silence, his sheets,
his untouched heart.
Maybe I’d be safe,
maybe bored,
maybe half-alive and warm.
Instead, I had him -
his songs, his hunger,
his faith that music could mend us.
He gave me everything
a poor man can afford to give -
himself.
Now I press my ear to the floor
and hear the pumps sigh below,
the sound like breathing
through a wound.
Love cannot pay the rent.
It cannot keep out rain or rust.
But it lingers -
a spark in the lung,
a tune that refuses to fade.
And I, foolish as ever,
cling to that ember,
because he was right in one way:
love is enough -
only never for long.
GBS
1999
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