It is not good

It has recently become clear that it is not good for me to miss my exit while driving alone. I pull over and turn the radio on. For no reason at all, just the sound of a voice not my own makes me think of you and I stop, rest my head on the steering wheel and sob until my throat is raw.

It is also not good to believe any promises given, especially that I'll be glad after it's over. What a fool to nod and say yes, yes, yes that I know one day I'll never again speak your name, that I'll crawl into a dark bed alone and smile to remember you. I'll never tell you that to keep from thinking of you I imagine a world, any world other than this. I sometimes forget, lose the reigns of fantasy and you, no, not even you, the idea of you comes back to me. And you wind your fingers in my hair and spark in the dark like electricity.

La lumière

I'd have bargained, begged. For fuck's sake, I'd have wept tears of blood, torn my hair, thrown myself to the ground.

Instead, I unknowingly sought a more subtle poison, your half-stunned joy. It was a gorgeous thing to share and I crept towards it, flinching wildly with every silence, every misspoken word.

How do you bear it? What reason can you give, now, for that useless hope?

What terrible grief did I uncover there, in that long-deserted wreckage?

It was you, after all, reaching out an empty hand. With the wisdom of long years and many failed expeditions, I observed silently your wounded smile, your careful laugh. I found you beneath an avalanche of folly and plans long ago gone awry and forgotten.

I glimpsed then, your true self, unmirrored and sure. How quickly you unfolded for me stories of midnight suns and crinolines ripped in a darkened cloakroom, your lips smeared dark.

You insisted I had found you, had rediscovered you, the cascade of bright longing and secret lusts springing forth from a heart stoppered for all the world like a champagne bottle.

I braved the tundra, the rocks and ice. I felt for the path beneath the terrible will of the fog, then grew parched beneath a venomous sun. I waited for morning, licking dew from a few ragged leaves, and by nightfall was lost beneath a terrible seething jungle.

Now I only curse the path, look for signs and symbols in the sun and the burning green grass.

Without destination, I turn inward like a broken compass, wait in a willful silence for the phone to ring, for your voice, your key in the door.

Bits and bobs from yesteryear

there is a sickness in you
and it grows
you bear it,
a gentle gun
against splitting skin
even as it breaks bones
you pull it closer, caressing

as you shake and spit
your careful claws
snake across my heaving heart

you curl and cry
to nurse your dissatisfaction
I am, as ever, your willing victim
and even as you crave comfort,
my soft white arms around you
you lift your head
to the soft shell of my ear
to loose a terrible poison there

which works in silence
until nothing is left of me
but a thick dark pool

****

You were a coward, you say
an unbearable booming silence tears across the line
jumps satellite to satellite
until it finds my quiet apartment
my bare white room
my mouth opens to speak
I shiver and shake
tucked in the dark bed, a pillow empty beside me
I imagine your slender hands
a hank of black hair, nearly blue, caught in a ripping wind
under a white winter sun
we huddled in the car, it's throaty rumble
bringing soon the miracle of rushing warmth

I would kill you if I could
despite your goodness
and explosive smile

A Forgotten Letter

The heart is dessicated, pressed flat between the pages of a textbook. It's the memory of a heart, preserved for posterity at the height of its vibrant colors. I felt the color begin to fade, the stems began to droop and for the sake of who'll come next I plucked it carefully and folded it between those blind pages.

Months pass in careful silence; I return to the heart, finger it's whisper thinness. Occasionally, I bring it to my mouth, warm it with blushing breath. It is a letter, folded and forgotten from last year's lover.

Without You

My stomach aches, I lie down on the white-clad bed. Here, loneliness develops form, a shape previously unknown. I read signs and signals in the sun, the burning green grass. This is the same room where you grasped my arm, wondering at the scent of chamomile and ylang-ylang. Your laugh skipped silver around this spare room; it's echoing still. I would wrench even your name from here if I could.

I imagine you carefully packing your bag for the walk to work, how the bright winter wind pulls your scarf and you nervously tuck it beneath your lapels again. I see you coming home alone, how you search your pockets for the keys, how the crack of the door opening sounds in the empty apartment. You pour the single glass of wine, curl up on the worn sofa.

It has fallen dark, and I wait and wait to sleep, to slip away from this hour and the one before.

With You

There was a worn wooden floor, tiny sunlit yellow rooms. There were the echoes of laughter clinging to the cobwebs. A tomato plant, maybe basil. There were lost glasses, keys, the novel under the couch cushions. There was a threadbare cotton coverlet, halfway off the bed, your tousled hair. A glass of wine, left out all night. And there was you, always, when I slipped into the side of the bed that's cold.

Time Circling Back

It has been proven by minds much finer than mine that time is, in fact, linear. However, I am allowed to hope it is not, but it is as the Toltec imagined - circular.

I am not headed towards another day of sunshine wearing thin over long hours. I am not to fall asleep tonight in another of a long series of whispering linens, but instead am bounding ceaselessly towards your ripe voice skipping across my bare shoulder.

Not away, you see, I'm returning to your desperate hands clasped across my back, your warm sleeping form beside me. I will once again find myself in the crossfire of gently lobbed words so like watered silk, curl beneath a flickering clock spelling out the hours until you find me in the dark.

Soon time will circle back on itself and you'll find me. Find me again.

A Feast at the End of the World

Pour le premier homme

What madness comes to those who fall too long towards the horizon? I learned quickly to stop fighting the rushing water, realized I had slipped too far into a biting undertow to ever see the surface again. It was a shock then, to wake beside you, your laughter picking out the sun from the sky.

You smile, I recoil; this dream had better last, or start to fade soon.

You lift the slice of green dappled pear to your lips and your eyes widen at the burst of juicy sweetness.

"I have made this, here, it's for you."

It has been a long, dry time and I am grateful for your generous hands. I taste a tiny morsel of what you've laid out; I blanch and turn, it's too sweet after such a long hunger. Give me water, not sweet wine. I'll die of privation even in the land of milk and honey, retching in the sand. But you laugh, and pile my arms with fruits too strange too name. I blink, and am wreathed in a bower of berry. I mouth my small words of thanks, but you still the sound with your hands. And so I fall prey to your sugared sweets. You wipe honey and liquor from my chin with gentle fingers.

"A feast at the end of the world" you whisper and lean closer.

How you have found me here, at the end of the world, I cannot think to ask. I hoped only for silence, for distance.

I lean in and your lips meet mine, but you turn your face. In an instant I think to grasp the falling fruits, and I am alone and I am beneath the surface of the water.

The Price of Pleasure

It's late. The light skips yellow across the wood floor and catches on my fingers, my bare feet. For the past hour, the window has been nothing but a dark mirror, but as I watch, the night splits down the middle to admit headlights. A car drives slowly by and realize I have been waiting breathlessly for it to stop.

I fold one leg beneath the other and sit, still and quiet. You spelled it out so clearly, I am A and you are B and the path was too dark between the two. I listened and waited and you did not answer. I told you it was foolish, but I am not a fool and the line fell silent between us. That night I dreamt of your voice.

This is the price of pleasure. Now I have silence, the comfort of clean linens and a wool sweater. Because I can, I walk outside and I do not think of you.