to not know you takes me back

the year is 2004. the place is oval beach.
the wind is calm. the voices far away.

in a few days, I’ll twist my ankle
in a few drops I’ll forget when rain was warm
it wasn’t always like this

it wasn’t always like you

I fell asleep last night dreaming of golden rings
of sunlight holding together quick inhalations
all over the floor of your room, letting them go
just fast enough, but only.

I wanted to write like you and breathe like you and
blink to the beat of your apocalyptic pulse
when you’ve spent the day stacking papers,
receipts of all the times you said okay

When it wasn’t. I fell for you behind closed doors,
imagining your aging memories of pain casting
you and me in the same bronze. But you,
instead, were buoyant gold-plated sturdy
forward-facing and I,
as ever, will find a way to keep you anyhow.

the long-suffering fire
sputtered against my cracked knuckles,
still warm and blue when i
packed up and went.

the air, now, is still wet with memory,
spiders tangled in silk of their own making,
collected in corners,
hardly touching,
hardly touched.

one syllable once stretched across my artery,
small and forgettable,
until blood and letters
stopped in their tracks, and
i became myself in the silence after the sparks.

from far away you can’t hear the matte echo
in pupils small but deep
and skittish.
if you let in too much light,
it all looks gold.

if you let in too much light,
you’ll miss it.

this is where we sat
my elbows bony
your mouth a hard line

some walls are painted yellow, some
lined in mirrors, yours
bare
i was

ancient
crude

drawn in eternal by words that mean
things that they don’t sound like, building
materials that belie their insides
lengths i’d never go to

we are both what we say we are
but you are more

maybe it was on the dam, graffitied
by hummingbirds
where i counted red ants
and minutes
on the bridge of your nose
at close range

and where we said goodbye
shrugged our shoulders
and never came back

or maybe it was on the brown couch
opposite the copy machine
that covered my hands
blackened them while you were away
you might have been proud

maybe it was in the recesses of the library
where i drank too much coffee
and found the only thing that drives me

or maybe it was right here
where i made up a nightmare
and never could shake it after that

it’s difficult to articulate the precise difference between drawing pictures and writing words. neither is particularly honest, especially when you ask me. there’s always a temptation to let a small truth stand in for a larger truth, and that is inherently a little bit dishonest. universality is only for some, only sometimes.

but imagining it is there more often and more broadly helps put a leash on the chaos of coffee shops and prison cells and tenements and castles. to imagine we are all held together by a shared sensation is a thrill irreplaceable by a one to one experience, by a touching of foreheads or being in love.

that’s only if you’re a good artist, though. sometimes you just have to draw exactly what you see, and then the only stretching of the truth is acting as if the chair legs aren’t there because they aren’t visible behind the table. if you’re a really honest human being, you can draw them and then erase them. but nobody is.

To grow up a restless gull, itching to go in every feather, spreading fingers across continents and craving every one of them. To finally go and lose your hunger. To settle into the next place like it’s the last, tuck your head under your wing and know only parking lots. To forget the sea was yours.

To need to hear the same song every day to keep your head. To paint a mural of where you’ve been so nobody suspects. To avoid eye contact because you’ve got nothing behind yours. To forage and forget. To forage and forget. To forget.