Let’s go back to 1.
To start again, to meet you, to seventeen, to yellow
and hugs, to hammers and strings.
Nobody knew me then, and I ****** up
told them the true story.
Let’s go back, and I’ll tell you a different one.
It started out a prepschool fantasy. I had a
Great Perhaps, and you
(were there, probably)
And then I ****** up, my friend.
I’d like to revert to 1: a second round
I’m ready, now.
Hello, nice to meet you
Would you like to have a drink with me?
I will say yes. I will be thin again for you
And when you touch my arm
I will not shrink
from you.
Let us. Let me, at least
Revert to 1
and promise
(I do—to do better now).

On money-soaked leather, we’ll make angels
no I’m sorry—we’ll make amends
I will talk breathy and flutter my eyelashes; I will be Daisy Buchanan
a rosewater anachronism that needs no cigarettes and no pretense, only
Attention
(I stood at, when you said goodbye)
There will be no end. There was no end. Not a goodbye.
On rust-red rooftops we will soliloquize
(about what?) (it doesn’t matter)
We will throw lit matches and watch how fire makes its mark
And we will separately wonder where it goes
and—are you listening?—we will watch the sunrise
and I will tell my daughter about that day when she is older.
A prepschool fantasy. We will drink to the word “contraband”
and it will be 1966—the rich kids’ 1966, the whitewashed one we pretend we are ashamed of.
I will be Daisy Buchanan, and thin again for you.
Let’s go back to 1. I would love to
try again, and better now.

I remember vaguely speaking of water tension when I spoke of you, when I realized the amount of our time I spent in pajamas and that that was bigger than just I-like-pajamas, it was also getting inside the bubble on the penny so as not to feel the contours of the water so much as each drop grew it into more fragile, and more fragile, and more fragile, and it defied the middle school science experiment when it never broke. it never broke. when it happened in my eyes it always broke and when it happened in kissing it always broke but the big bubble that we were in never broke. I thought that was good. we defied science, I thought. but the thing about water tension is that it is tension and it never went away. until now. I don’t feel you when I see you now. I feel that you feel me but it doesn’t matter. it broke. it was just a water droplet on a penny.

I was older than you called me by my freckles when we met, barely
stretched over the cattails lazily in sweet winds imperceptible usually through
the hot water air
at a parboil

your cigarette-and-sunscreen, cigarette-and-sunshine smell and feel I have you
now as I walk eyes closed down the autumn street
no all smokes do not smell the same, I miss you—

the world in your departure is static for the most
ironic twist of you thought, you thought that I was beautiful
I wasn’t, not while you were watching, not till you
were farther
till I was older, barely

oh if all smokes were you still
if all the suns were you
if I weren’t beautiful and you were looking
oh

in the hot hot hotbox where the
interlude first dug in its feathered heels
(the *******), now, it being
gone with the wind, the wellsprings
reflexively engage because the wind
is hot and here I'm not unused to you yet
and I sure don't miss you but here
I nearly want to

I turned bated breath on my blind eyes and tick
tock
tick
tock
august strode away. august bloated on july and june and
god knows what because august is a bit of an alcoholic,
if you’ll please be discreet about that—we don’t want word to get around

the curtains drawn and folded, I balled my fists and white
knuckled touched chests and abdomens and shoulders but never doors;
somersaults between my ears and over
and over
and over
hardwood against your cranium
you feel it eventually
or I do

and then august screams a marissa-by-the-pool scream but not aloud
and she doesn’t talk to you she doesn’t
talk to you
she’s got nothing to say and you
you
you’ve got nothing to say and

everything is better now it’s so much better
but she doesn’t shake hands for more than a two-count now and
you don’t feel your heartbeat in your ears, usually

to feel the beginning, and end
you take note of how lucky
you are on five hundred threads
and the beer in the fridge on your
parents’ blind-eyed tab
and how just this last time
you can drink coffee before bed
or not come home tonight
or see middle-america with
only your own blessing.

you do not
take note of the broken storm window;
what’s it to you?

I was a creature of spring and autumn; I made no bones about being temperate
even-tempered, even temporary, alive only as many hours daily as the daylight
sinking when the sun sank, sleeping early like a child, sleeping till the dark passed
staying warm under the down until the dawn, where I woke if there was color out the window
but there wasn't always, and on those days I slept.

There was a time that spanned awhile when I thought "alive" to be synonymous with
to not-be-dead, that to die was to stop breathing; to stop living was no different.
I was only alive between the hours that the graveyard gates were open, and even less,
as the grayer days and I never made our acquaintance, as I had made my acquiescence
and my peace with the perpetual proverbial graveyard shift.

I misjudged the patterns of the wind one morning and arose with the milky light
and, tricked by the mild breeze, was caught in a flurry on my long walk. It was cold on my skin
a shock to the system, to my lilywhite hands and my overwarm blood. But my god
it was the most beautiful thing my oft-closed eyes had ever had the pleasure to take in.
And the not-quite sun went down as I watched, and the snowflakes turned to stars, and hung there
weightless, like me, and I was all-at-once electrified and new and I thought childishly
to perhaps stay here for the night, and forever, and watch the seasons change extremely
because it seemed a shame to resist extremity now that I knew the meaning of, and was,
wholly, inextinguishably alive.