i love you for your contradictions—

the tuned dissonance that hums

past midnight lips,

brushing my ear when you sleepily

draw me in closer.

i lie in the curve of your heartbeat,

thinking about concrete abstracts,

but mostly about how you warmed

my foot with your hand,

how you seem to smile the most

by the way we walk in time,

and how i always miss you

when i have you.



(i like how we always have to

relearn how to click together,

and how it takes about

thirty seconds, the awkward space between

fingers interlocking.)



you leave me with tear-slicked elbows,

and i hurry our goodbyes.

sun-warmed hands and

tongue-warmed teeth;

she chews on a wingless idea,

stilted by an upward momentum.

maybe she doesn’t grow,

but she stretches, expands,

taking entropy with her.



and she knows

(she knows)

that when she’s reached the top,

she’ll be at the bottom,

and the circles

of mind-numbing thought

will bleach her ribs white.

you stranger,

you becoming stranger,

your voice the

heart-beat spindle’s threadbare pull,

pulsating in green-light chorus,

washing me in and out of the shore

of an intangible reality

that i think you not only live in,

but that you’ve created for yourself,

cloth of blood and crystalline light

and layer

upon layer

of memory

that may or may not have happened.



i dream of having my own palace in the

inverted sky;

i’d be the taste that

you try to swallow away,

the flickering guilt of

the candle you forgot to blow

out when you left the room—

you left me in the light.



i’d coax that tendril of

half-thought half-baked

slightly-worn

feeling,

weaving it

through the syllables of my fingertips.

the drumming of my hands

across impatient countertops would

keep the time,

and you’d grow in rhythm.



i’d smile,

the smug, gap-toothed knowledge

that comes from molding the inarticulate

summation of

yourself,

you, who i have never met.

our eyes would meet across the infinite

cliff of a space between words,

and that would be enough.



i’d like to be able to leave

the sound of my voice in the

crook of your elbow,

jarring your step as

you try to look past the horizon,

and only see my

tower of

words—

i want to be your babel, baby.

this isn’t love.

this is another

addiction.


and that’s what i tell you,

conventional facebook wisdom,

from a mountain range away.



i can see the crinkle of

spontaneity in the folds of the

bouquet you bought her,

the red and gold and pink

of the sunsets i left behind;

they wilted when you put them

in her car while she was at work,

the unspoken knowledge of an

unlocked door,

shutting in a touch of

pollen and hope, dusting her

rearview mirror.



i wonder if she’ll be able to drive and

see clearly.



i know you have an addictive personality,

that you cling and destroy and renew with sadism and intelligence and love,

but this isn’t going to work.

this isn’t going to solve

half a year’s worth of her saying no,

and a year and half’s worth of a repetitive, vicious cycle,

that she was all too right to break out of.



no amount of flowers will bring her back,

even the largest bloom will not be enough to be a

sufficient metaphor for your renewed passion.



all you have left is the receipt of ashes

that you left in the driver’s seat.

you cried and i didn’t,

because why would we

ever do anything that

adheres to gender stereotypes?



and even though i wasn’t crying,

i could hear myself talking

in an endless stream of cliches

that pulled me through whatever

eddy of frantic panic

of dislocation

of petrifying disorientation

i was feeling,

and pushed me into a remote

grey

corner,

where i couldn’t feel anything

but how your sobs mixed

with the static of

horrible reception.

(and that was crying enough)



you said

“i don’t know what to do,”

you said

“what should i do?”

and **** me if i knew,

because i always know what to do,

but i’m not you,

but that’s why this has worked

for a year

and six days.



so i sat next to my chemistry textbook

on a rough grey slab of stone,

on a day that seemed like it couldn’t decide

whether to shine or not,

and listened to you

gasp

in air

like the words you had to say

but didn’t want to

were multiplying,

a cancer in your throat

and i wanted to

leave them there,

let you suffocate,

so i wouldn’t have to hear them.

but i’m the rock,

and i felt the rock,

and i couldn’t feel anything else by this point anyway,

so i said what i thought i would have to say,

but what i thought was the product of an

overactive imagination.



and this wasn’t sealable,

this wasn’t something that could be cemented into

the bench under my feet,

holding me and my invisible tears

and my chemistry textbook.

because i’m the rock,

but you’re my rock,

and everything was breaking

into something

that cut.



and you didn’t know,

and i didn’t want you to,

and you asked me,

and i didn’t know,

and you didn’t want to,

and i asked you,

and you smiled again,

and i disconnected in the cold of

a shaken faith.



and sat, and watched the grass grow.

i

because instead of slipping away,

i can feel you

stretching away

through the lines of electricity that

used to run from

hand to hand finger to finger

seamlessly clasped and lightning touch

but now, the distinct, archaic

electricity wires;

through the state line that makes

144 miles

2.5 hours in a car with traffic,

3.5 hours in a train with horizons

seem like the years that we spent

not knowing each other;

through the lines of shadow that

keep me up in the middle of the night,

pulling me down when

i’m short enough already, thanks;

through the line that was once binding us,

which was only there to make separate forms

somewhat distinct—

the line which now feels

like us dissolving

thinning,

holes becoming gaps becoming gasps,

then melting into

tarred and feathered feelings,

and the knowledge that even

poetry

can’t make me feel what you felt today.

life line, my ***.


ii

some days, i feel

like a ******* camel.

not only because i have to

stumble bleak miles over

thankless tundra under the

blue sky of distinct impossibility

that in reality is heaven on earth,

but in reality doesn’t have your smile;

not only because i have to do this with

memories of you stored

like water in humps—

the way you look when we press up

nose to nose and laugh,

the way you feel like something new

and something never-ending

the way you conduct lightning though my spine

and make thunder sound in my ears

all of which has faded to a distant sloshing;

not only because sometimes

i see a mirage, that

palm tree lake luau oasis,

that glimpse of the curve of your jaw or

whisper of the sound of your voice

that makes me turn around

but is really another sand dune;

but because when i see other couples

with their hands interlocked and their

eyes aligned and their feet in step like

their life is a stage and their world is a musical,

i want to ******* spit.


iii.

but sometimes i realize

that stretching is growth is elasticity;

that because the  kinetic momentum of matter

is the fusion of what i want to want

with what i need to need,

it doesn’t matter

because either way,

i can’t complain.

that because i’m at home in the sound of your voice

and because i haven’t been homesick at all, but

lovesick and yousick and

healthier than ever because of it—

it makes me smile whenever, at the end of every conversation, we say:

i love you

i miss you.

i can lose myself in your eyes—



no, actually, that’s not true.



i have an excellent sense of direction

(up down around the contours of

your spine,

between the frantic pulls of

your breath,

across yet through the rise and fall of

your chest;

always with the certainty of

you)



though i do usually become waylaid by

crossways,

intersections,

and boulevards;

by unspoken daydreams,

unseen words,

and misplaced thoughts;

by the

fragile temerity

of an allusion at midnight,

and the

convenient paradoxes of

endless space

and finite time.



but you;

you, i can find.

because though i will never be quite able

to steer myself by

stars, portents, or street signs,

i can feel the way across your fingertips

as surely as any sailor

and where the

stars, portents, or street signs

direct, but do not guide

it is your warmth

that means that i will

never

get lost in your eyes.

because i’ll always be

found in your voice,

and the taste of

your touch.



and while i’ll always have to

carry a map

and still have to

stop three times to

reorient

redirect

and ask for directions,

i’m not too worried.



because lost

is a frame of mind,

and found

is a destination

that I am constantly

leaving and arriving;

an infinite loop

wrapped around

your little finger.