I can't trace the crown of my indifference towards you (or anyone else) to a definitive source.
Whether you are strung to me or I to you,
our union imports
several interpretations.

You might be like fishing wire:
binding limbs, constricting movement;
if I deviate, I suffer your sharp cut of resistance.

Maybe you're yarn: soft, nurturing; but again, any move that falls outside the lines of your predicated design--any undue tightening or loose end--results in chaos.

Or perhaps you are the hand that draws the line:
you, the invisible puppeteer
who governs my every wayward glance
or dishonest act at the whim of your object, your desire;
one string leads to the
magnetism of your cologne
and another, the heat
of your knees in fitted jeans
against mine.
If it be that,
then, my indifference would serve as my aide,
a final desperate cling to autonomy.

But what if we were both cast
in the same web, rendered useless
through entanglement, would we
claw towards each other, content
though the silk grows thick
with every reach?
Would we tear our way to liberty?
Or if we were to find that thing-
the source-
and cut all ties,
would magnetism wind us up again?

If I unravel, what would you do?
If you unravel, would I leave you
in a pile at my feet?
Would I cast dead strings aside
and embrace the freshness-
raw and bleeding but alive-
beneath the rage?

The finality and profundity
with which you broke me
has hardened me;
I feel now I have nothing to fear.

Except I'm encased in a glass jar;
An invisible boundary neatly capping
how much I can let myself feel.

And the rims of this glass jar
are curved and heavy.

We are renters
Living off leased land
Never land owners
Years of finances poured into revolving doors
and recycled down into intricate designs creeping beyond the
comprehension of the reasonable woman
(or man)

Why do we fear so much the need for one another?
Desperately flattening desire into hardened emotion
We can't even breathe properly anymore
Oozing smoke and conspiracies out of our pores;

anxiety became our lifeblood

One you peered at and collected data on
in the confines of your tantrum
journal
You with your diamond eyes
Looking at me through
a purple looking glass window
haze and wondering
about me
It was a distant curiosity
Removed
Detached from itself
and from me and from all the loose
and heavy vessels
that connected us

I picture myself crushing
an orange, star-shaped pill.
Pressing a bit into your palm as we exit your RV.
"I probably shouldn't," you hesitate,
but I press on.
"Just try a little. You'll like it. I promise."
So we taxi away,
lacing sticky fingers around each other
and plastic cups of beer.

We lean into electrifying music
that sounds like an emergency room or an ongoing migraine,
but the tremors feed us.
You pluck a styrofoam light saber off the ground and hand it to me.
I watch its blues melting into greens dripping into reds and orange-yellows and it is the most beautiful thing in the world.

You claim you don't feel It,
shrugging all cool and nonchalant.
So what’s with your magnetic gaze,
or the way your trembling fingertips trace my lips?
Why are we tangled up like this, all wordless and gooey?
And what about your pupils—the way they are filling up your eyes?

“Well,” you concede.
“It just makes me want to have *** with you.”
But it’s more than that!
Every moment vibrates with magic!
And all I want is you
and the sensation of skin
against bare skin
and to be enveloped in that warmth again.
I relish the blurring of our lines,
the way I can’t tell when my trip ends or yours begins.

And in the hours that creep towards the sunrise we plant
ourselves on the dock.
Fill our lungs with smoke.
Count the patterns moving through the lazy black tides.
And you tell me all these profound things you’ve never mentioned before.
And I forget almost all of them.

But the thing is
We are falling in love.
You could never say It,
so I have to.
And I don’t want it to feel intense or weird—
but there’s intensity and weirdness already
brewing beneath the surface of our interactions and
now that I let It in
you feel too far away from me
when you’re only across town.
And there’s not enough of you
to swallow me whole
And It scares me.
And It comforts me.

Because you love me
even when I can’t bear to be loved,
and I unravel
because somehow I know – I’ve always known –
that you’ll never hurt me
worse than he did.

He leaves
a perpetual question mark

Closes a gap
opens a new one

Buries me
In burning drags
And powder

I am a pawn, a
Vague magnet

Easing myself
Between the
Lines
I expect to
Fill

what will happen
to the rooms I filled with clothes and books
and shoes and plans and bodies?
And where will I keep
my unchecked desire for love
within the folds of this fierce
barren
town?