You touched me on the shoulder
as you ran quickly by on your phone.

I was in such a hurry
to climb those jenga stairs
that I didn't realize it was you,
until I saw that tiny body
and that frenzy of tousled blond hair
swishing in the wind.

I turned around and ran
to you,
as you walked away.

I ran to you
and grabbed your arm.

"Don't touch me," you said.

Diamonds falling from your eyes,
I picked at them with my pinky fingernail,
searching for the loam beneath.

"Where've you been?" I yelled.

"You don't know what's happened to me!" You yelled,
and you lifted your shirt and felt at a pink scar;
a trench in your belly,
a wound that I had infected.

People stared,
but I just wanted to yell,
there was so much yelling inside of me.

I yelled like a lover yells,
yelled with my heart.

The yell sounded like this:
"Can I hold you one last time?
I just want to hold you," I said,
like a loon,
but it was the only thing
I ever wanted.

To hold all of you
in one moment.

And so you came to me,
and let me hold you a while.

but the skin between us
was better for separating,
and I told you
to call me if you needed me,
even though I knew you never would.

And you walked away,
that tiny body of circling movement
and head full of giant clams
with their swirling pink pearls
moving farther and farther.

Until you were in the distance
and invincible.

Cyclists whizzed by,
phones beeped onward,
taxis rode highways of clouds
beneath the bridge,
and I thrummed quietly,
picking at the diamonds in my hands,
searching for the loam
that I could put into the planters,
food for the flowers
I had always wanted you to see.

When he was seventeen years old,
your protagonist
asked his father
a question about heartbreak, his own perhaps.

The father
answered:
"Why would she love you?
I can see why?
You're acting like a *****?"

Each line a question,
demanding an answer.

Answers your protagonist
did not have.

So your protagonist
ventured out into the
world,
and became a rambler.

Rambling off nonsense
with the rapidity
of lemming chatter.

He became
the great Rambler,
mumbling about
love,
until even his dreams
became ****** up streams
of language.

He caromed off cliffs of reality
bumping against those barriers
of his fatherland
until he was hurtling
into the rambling ocean
to drown
unconsciously.

I have run down
broken stairs,
I have twisted
inside
twisted showers,
bent backwards
on five-fingered clocks,
in the fray
I rumbled
with a spider
of a woman
as she crawled on eight legs
over my sternum
to my lips,
at the top of the bridge of the world,
the world
turned
rightside
up
and the sky
was peopled by
clouds the size
of goldfish,
and the sun
was a dappling bowl
in which people put their
hands
to wash them of pain,
and so the world was all right,
but I couldn't handle
so much happiness,
none of the other
fish
looked like you,
even as I looked up
out of my
apartment
made of jenga blocks,
so I travelled back down
the twisted
showers,
broken
stairs,
and over the underbelly
of the bridge,
until I held you in my arms;
your tiny body
whole to me again,
I could touch the sky
when I touched your body
and told you to call me
whenever you needed me,
but you walked away,
and so I returned
to that hell
of perfection.

I hate living in the sky,
the ocean where the fish
look all the same
and there are no real clouds
to speak of.

I hate taking twisted showers,
and rumbling with spider-women,
I hate bridges that bridge
worlds.

Firstly, I hate love,
Secondly, I hate heartbreak,
Thirdly, I can't live without those two things.

I ate two omlettes
this morning,
had a few cups of coffee
as you let me go
over grits.

When I walked around
I pulled myself along
by ropes thrown down
by the clouds,
and helped myself
to a full helping
of blue sky as salty as lobster,
and still I walked,
with too much sodium
in my veins,
I walked around
passing the others
as they were to me:
others.

In this alien world,
I pluck my blessings
from the sky,
as it darkens with thunder,
I place
my hope
in lightning and it's frenzied slapping of the earth
because it mimics my frantic heart
in its crazy destinations.

So I put you in tiny places
inside of me,
the box labeled toys
is where I put the buzzing
apparatus that is you,
in the kitchen supplies
I lie
and say there is nothing there,
when there is everything I have hidden
that is you.

So as I move,
I carry around storage
spaces
and boxes
marked in the wrong names
carrying heavy things
bearing you
in their heavy wake.

I swear,
Gnat
had two moods,
crazy
and angry,
one time
she punched me in the face,
and I smacked her,
and smacked her again
until we were spooning
on the couch
and she cried
as a lavaflow of tears
fell on my wrists.

But then
she had this mood
where she'd
clutch me,
through my ribs
to my heart,
and we'd love each other
so hurtfully
that I'd die
every time she touched me.

She grabbed my heart
so viciously,
and consequentially,
that I just wanted to die
in her fingertips.

Gnat
really did love me,
she cooked soup when I was sick
and came over
and listened as I told her flu stories,
I held her
as she cried over lost loves,
We glistened
in the sun
as we laid in the sand
of a contaminated lake,
she put her hand on my ****
like she was holding
love in her hands,
and I played in her pelvis
like a child, innocent
of anger and resentment,
so many of the lies
that we attribute
to adult relationships
occur
after love.

I hate that Gnat and I
no longer talk,
hate that she can't make me
pancakes in the morning,
or that I can't put blueberries
in her waffles.

I bumble down the street
to get some Wild Turkey,
remembering her last call,
our last talk.

It'll be ok,
she's gone
and I can find
place-holders.

This will be easy,
right?

Love is easy,
right?

Heartbreak is easy,
right?

But it's not,
it hurts like nails
in my forearms and palms.

i eat my soul
out,
eat my heart
out,
eat everything inside
until I am a wolf creature
outside
in the dark,
howling at the sickle moon,
raving at some girl
in a bar
who I could ****,
but don't want to,
I can't erase
the stain of that other star
and the nebulas
of bright crimson
and hushed cerulean
that flourished
in the disturbing galaxy
and it's black holes
*******
away at light,
so I come back home early,
stumbling
through the girls that talk about raw *******,
while there is one star of knowledge
distancing itself from me.