is even more emancipating than playing music, dancing, running — running away
or burning the paper that sit on my desk in my second home
partly because with your ruffled hair you look like the thoughts I wish I could have
partly because of our understanding of each other
partly because you give me space to talk, to cry, and you listen, really listen
mostly because you supply the drink that promises to drown out the noise
its sweet burn is more sickening than the expectations, fragments of which
have been lain around me by my mind like the masons that build with marble
haunted by the twisted corpses of the children that had mined them.
The wall of expectations that threatens to cave in and consume me.
I look
At you and I would rather ask you to reinforce my insulting thoughts
than to ask for your support I’m unfamiliar with
Except possibly when I’ve almost dried up the bottle,
and the loneliness overwhelms and spills over like the glass you wordlessly refill for me
And thank heavens you don’t ask how I’ve been because I don’t think I could stop
if I started talking, and if I start talking I’ll cry and you’ll just sit and listen quietly.
And that’s not fair. It my fault for being this way, and for asking you to have a drink with
Me
And what good does my guise of success do when the cost is my happiness.
I hope you can forgive me for talking about myself.
I’m no O’Hara, I cannot get the right person to stand near the tree when the sun soaks
I’m not in love.
And I don’t know if you like to have drinks with me or if if you just feel sorry for me,
but your presence calms, and you brought the drink when no on else understood
it seems they were all spared of some wretched experience
which has not escaped me, or isolated me, yet
which is why I’m telling you about it.
Pastiche of "Having a Coke with You" by Frank O'Hara