Dry

we were fish in a barrel

gape-mouthed with trust

that life would carry on

like this...

or like that...

and suddenly then

wide-eyed

because Independence Day came early

with neither a whimper nor a bang

but a soul freed

while the blood of his body

let onto crosshatched pavement

my feet had tread for years

a school scattered

too many swimming thoughts to weep

too many mechanisms

like waves pushing me

to pick up a shoe, a bag, a shattered sense of scale

that i would never quite

piece back together

to be thrown back

and now the dull crack of it

sends me twitching

dry

gasping for breath.

For once

What would happen, then, if I asked you to marry me tomorrow? If I said that I had lived long enough without you and had suffered enough without you and had grown tired of it? What if I told you I didn’t want to feel discouraged anymore? That I wanted something stable and offhandedly eager? Something that I never had to argue for? What would you do? I’d put my money on running, though I’d hope for something more favorable to me. I wish that you would favor me. For once.

Why is it that you can envision a world where no soul suffers but you can’t imagine a life with me? Aren’t I a soul that suffers? That feels pain and death repeated, over and over again, at words that go unspoken? You’ve slain me a thousand times.

Dismissal is so easy. That’s it! That’s why she does it, because it’s easier than holding on for dear life, for being the last one to keep pace, fingers tight and aching as she claws her way into the light. I can’t not fight for it if I believe it, that would be unfair. But the factors that contribute go beyond ergs and effort. They include pasts and futures, all plain and forgone conclusions. Easy, remember?

But I’ve never been the easy choice, though my name is a simple one. And you’ve never been able to trust that I’m not too good to be true. Shame on you for that- there is no other shoe. There is nothing but a woman with holes in her socks and a disdain for dishonesty, and she’d tell you all about it if you’d ask. She would tell you stories and she would tiptoe around the house so as not to wake you.

Tragedy, with company.

The dissolution

I watch with diseased pleasure

that burns and spreads and folds in on a promise

you made me 800 years ago-

the last words to come straining from the split lips

of a dignified man.

And the last promise you would ever make,

aware at last of what bound you-

that i would no longer be content to suffer fools,

that we've fallen together like angels fall- blind and burning,

with the locomotive power to rip the color white from snow.

I believe your soul's response knows mine

and courts it to tragedy, for company.

I want this to go places.

I want this to go places. I want the whole shebang. No missteps, no casualties, no red tape. Nothing but you and me and free sailing. I know where you are but I know what it’s like to sit across from someone and know they’re looking for anyone. I don’t feel that with you, that you’re looking for anyone, a body, a warmth, a comfort. I will never make you comfortable- that’s not how this real thing works. This real thing works because it keeps us in motion, not quite at a loss but never in rigid lockstep. You will never know me exactly but that’s why I’ll love you- because you’ll still be interested after all those years, and interesting. You’ll still make my face flush and glow. People see it already, the glow, and it feels like I’ve known you a million years. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed that when we’re still, sitting, the picket fence goes up around us, and the garden and the children run laughing by and then we’re at a dinner table surrounded by friends in a toast to our love, the one we’ve shared for years but never really returned to the universe- we’ve held it between ourselves as if it couldn’t be merely on loan for our lifetime. As if it couldn’t be greater than the two of us.

 

This is too much to tell you right now. I may lay it all out on the line sometimes but at heart I’m a realist, I realize. Your free will is as strong as mine, though I love when you use it to pin my arms up beside me. It’s a gesture no-one’s ever made, it’s a gesture that makes me feel as if I would never need to ask another question for the rest of my life. This is so stupid, this writing. Putting things on paper for you to see and judge, when you know them even if I haven’t said them out loud. *Sigh* And I’m drunk off of wine and you’ll see it sometime, the way I am when I’m drunk- restless and sometimes morbid in my assessments. I could convince myself right now that you’ll never love me but I don’t want to do this, I want to see what happens when we collide, maybe fireside into a burst of raw threads peeling each other apart and meeting again. Can you feel it twining together? I send that out sometimes, a curly tendril to brush your cheek as you sleep, to make you think of me. It’s not sorcery, it’s so much more plain, a no-frills way to tell you that I think about you at the very base of my matter. I’d think you could dig that, if there were anything to dig- but I’ve left it out in the open for you, a rare and randy assortment.

 

See what you’ve inspired? A grandiose self-punishment. You’ve inspired a scoff. No, that’s not fair- you’ve inspired so much more, but sobriety is a funny thing in that I spend most of my days in concert with it and most of my nights, even, in concert with it and so to read this sober will be a dull headache because it will feel true. And because I just never know when to stop.

 

Back, then, to what I want. I want to be your arm candy and your warm body and your crossword puzzle dictionary. I want to be your side-by-side and sometimes upside-down. I want to have you cornered. I want to come out unscathed, but I want someday to fight for you. Make things plain for me- give me something to cry about. It’s the only way I ever really live, and when the salt dries on paper it spells out the very least of my tragedies. I’m so compliant but that has never disturbed me, it’s only when I wish for something. 

dream date

unfettered, uncomplicated, but overcaffeinated

and vainly hoping that you won't bore me

i circle back to starting points

vague fixtures

go 'round and 'round

'til i end where?

the where doesn't matter

except i am alone

untangled

streamlined

and thinking what i really want, then

is not to be bored or boring

calcified, captive, corrupt

so i involve myself

these aren't dreams, these are stories!

and I am so self-involved

but in a buttery sense

frictionless

and sometimes so simple

as to be a dot- harmless, clean

clean and sleeping.

disembody

on being stone cold

and calibrated

as not to forgive

or concede

i foster dissent in your absence

and won't be touched unprepared-

caught at wrong angles

curled 'round any finger

and you felt it at the start-

my stony finger

now pulling the trigger

It's Easy

I want to yell out in the very best way, and I want it to rip you awake. Cosmically speaking, do you know what I mean?

Do you feel the tender pulse that craves its way across the states, and stares you down in a lovely crowded space?

Have you seen us on a city park bench and thought "It's you, it's you, it's you..."?