Found it

I wrote this poem for my best friend, Dori, who I badly missed at the time (still do, actually) and who I went through highschool with and had been living with right before I moved to San Francisco. It's hard to believe it was seven years ago. She is a heart friend, a gift from God, and although we've stayed friends and still visit and talk, our lives have grown to include so many other things. (Like husbands and children.) I've always loved this poem, because I wrote it in one of those rare moments when I could say just exactly what I needed to say. 

***

no one else calls me John.

i would love to share this now with you
slice of today, taste of chocolate
yellow cup of coffee in my hand. these new boots
that you have never seen, foreign piece of
mandarin skirt (colour, not
chinese) [you like this skirt] wrap in the
mail- the post irregular, we don't talk
into the night like we used to
(my hair is gone.)  i cut it off because. well,
because you're not around when I wake up
anymore ["this is the look i'm going for"] and because
no one else calls me John and i somehow needed
to do something (to take the edge off of missing you)
to dull my resistance to these new things. to believe
again, the things you used to tell me, yellow cup after
yellow cup of coffee in the garden at night
[our spot, my friend]
on the porch sometimes people joined us and sometimes
we sat alone under the trees or
by the house in the light
singing nonsense medleys into the blue.