insipid, her blue eyes her blue dresses. the only-ness of her. her laugh like oleander.
she was Strong and Independent and she Didn't Need Me, but she had me anyway, for a minute.
i am cross-legged on the ugly wool blanket we made love under first. the first of many but empty.
i am cross-legged and my fingers restless, invisible piano keys trilling to the wee hours. many but empty.
the skin of my index finger bitten raw, the skin of my lower lip bitten raw.
the pretension of her jabs at pretension. her manufactured offbeat passion. her cat, her moleskin notebook.
ordinary, but only. insipid but aquamarine and clear as bells. she Didn't Need Me.
the first of many. and empty.

coming back to where you first met
Agony
and her brother, her even (meaner and) more beautiful brother
after a spell of the freshest forgetting
and rising early for a run, and eating raw almonds and practicing yoga
and being by yourself not-as-suffering

Oh.

You are all toothy smiles and dark curls and
“I’ve had a wonderful time”
and you are telling the truth
but you believe that you are lying

And.

Agony’s brother went home to the West; Agony misses him so she stays indoors.

But she shows up every so often

for a cup of sugar or
yesterday’s party

Nineteen forty four: A broad shoulder silhouette in the milkwhite skyscape.
Winged coy mortality whispers lovewords to his temple
touches fire to his inner thigh and he
pushes her aside and says Maybe tomorrow,
I'm working late tonight.

And he is cold and american but he tells himself
He is Cold! and American! And even in the
sandbag eyelid opal gray morning when his skylegs shake
he is cold and American and his copper girl's
thrilling reproach cannot warm him red
until he unzips his vest and invites her in.



but in forty nine he is twenty seven and American. in forty nine, to be American is to have no skylegs.
but baby death writes him letters while jean marie in her cap-sleeves looks pretty at his side.
and he likes jean marie, he tells himself he likes her better. she is pretty and she is sturdy.
she can make love without leaving burn marks.

but he wears slippers and housecoats and he has no skylegs.
and jean's cap-sleeves show no skin. fire hurt to touch but at least she let him.

and so twenty seven and scared, he reads baby death's neat tiny scrawl
and feels her breath on his earlobe
and winged
coy

he falls to forty four
and flying

yes how fitting that she is what she is
inescapable and terrorized by what she is
and tries on deaf ears to illustrate that color is terror
when it fades, and when it breaks

how fitting that she left the winter in her wake
how fitting that she didn't feel it following her, shadowed, sinister

that one word gaining myth and momentum as we go (and we go, and we go)
it does not define itself; how fitting her frenzy to define it
in the inherent vacuum where it cannot breathe

how fitting that she stumbled and reversed the seasons
and that orange blends with autumn ground but not with april
and when it fades, and when it breaks
it isn’t ever overlooked
or forgotten

breakfast cereal disintegrates between tooth and cheek like
andean snowflakes do underfoot where I go to get
gone from the day-in-day-out ladybugs on the ceiling

I swallow it for the calcium
it doesn’t taste like much

and they smell when they crash into the mirror

he grew a light beard over the summer
and he looked like a sculpture, like a ******* adonis
in the most beautiful handsome unplanned way
and he was talking about laundry detergent, or apple pie, or something
and you zoned out looking at him
and then your friend whispered in your ear
“What is that ugly-*** beard”
and you said “Yeah”
but you smiled a secret smile and kept on looking

cat in the windowsill I cross my legs
on the smaller softer couch blinded like I
wouldn’t have it anyway else
clean glasses for the clean beams
clean left hand for the coffee
solitary where later I will not be

the year of the paper-cut slows to a trot when I squint
***** rug through narrow iris pure white in the meantime
the year of the paper-cut giving way early to first-aid spring

break, break, break they kept saying
cat in the windowsill I cross my legs
say back no, I will not

quiet melting from the gutter
quiet trilling from the guitar
quiet sunshine on my knees
quiet sidewalk waiting patient
for quiet
warm
feet

refracted sunshine pauses on boxwood leaflets before
whipping around to color white walls white and whiter
just shy of blinding, shy of why’d-you-ever-look-away

quarter-miles before, a stone bridge frames a roadway with
one wrinkle, a painting you’d **** to catch on canvas, if
you could stop the car and hold it in your iris long enough

this morning, you woke from fever dreams to an it’s-all-right-now
I’m-here, and you saw that he was right as they faded and shrank
in the daytime and remembering it was you who once was

so insistent that the world looks good in gold

i told you the verymost secret truth to ease the parting blow. so you'd forgive me that the only blow was parting, that the bookshelf wasn't big enough for us both. when i told you all those other truths you thought i'd be the leatherbound dictionary that stays the digital age but i let you in on the verymost secret one and now you're not so sure, huh. you're not so sure. i'm not so sure. the definition marked by post-it is a word that is not officially recognized. the english language never was so much my thing; i stumbled all over it in nerves and inescapable sincerity that was too close together on the cookie sheet and came out wrong and stomach-aching. i stumbled all over in nerves. i roll back my shoulders and i say "good, how are you!" and i make lists and lists and lists to plan my heartwarming. i sit in the sun and i write on my hand how much i love the sun but my hand doesn't say anything back, that was your thing. the sun might not be real, now, even though it's warm. 

i am really very good, i think. but i don't know unless i tell you. what i tell you might be all that is real, and that might be why the verymost secret truth is all that blurs my vision now. i roll my shoulders back and i say that i am really very good. and they say, good! but the parting blow was all i could give you, so i can't tell you good, and the secret truth is the one that stays, and the digital age crawls forward, and the leather cracks, and i miss you.

The bed was warm with the
body of—



Christ!!!


how can you ******* look like that
do what you do
drink all that **** whiskey
kiss your mother with that mouth?


that Jesus abdomen, I’m always forgetting to
sweep the floor, haven’t even been downstairs
in days



the body of a—



Jesus Christ!!!!



can you just
put a shirt on
so I can think straight

your young smile, not metallic, caught me off-guard and quickly. it belied your voice, which was apt to project across the verdure, and was so much stronger than mine. we caught the end of summer and wisps of each other’s colds, but only from across the table. minty breath in words, never louder, the crook of my arm with a scent like I think yours has. we slid downhill, momentum loosely attached to our shoulders and flying out behind us. and like a careful demonstration of the unreliable nature of time and structure, we stopped hard at the bottom. and we waited. and then when the sun set, we disappeared. or rather, you did: you and your young smile. your voice gone from the verdure and no mint in the air, my throat clear and my hands empty; never loud and never closer—caught off-guard and quickly.

glossy paper—I don’t have any glossy paper, I panic
I cannot do you justice on carbon, so I do you no justice
and rely on shaky memory for your being-gone
your gone-ness, your not-here

it comes and goes but it comes, it comes more often
and it’s like when you think there’s water in your cup
but there isn’t, and you lift it, and it goes above your head
and it’s a bruise on your gums from a bread-crust you don’t remember
and when you leave your favorite shirt at your summer home
and the housekeeper takes it quietly

I can’t look at you without the proper paper
I can’t look at you at all
I can’t do you justice in your not-here
and I don’t trust my eyes
to see you after

the world's at home, and it's from taming one star to another till it's light.

once upon your voice I walked on eggshells
wrote on eggshells with infinity and refuge
you’d drink a fifth
of anchor steam, and refuge
we’d talk all the doors closed
refuge.

the fault lines, beautiful in
their unself became the weave of things
your skin radiated a reddish copper glow of
the ones behind
floating like in your stars
red and gold—
he’d change your colors.

I had faults, but we did not
and you did not, but he
talked like next year with you
and this heaven curdled—
I wanted to *like heaven and so I
breathed the doors closed quiet
drank my own refuge in the dark
that you didn’t ever count.

let’s count the darkness now
the sun is what I love and I can see it
hiding in the things you said—
“we were back burner anyway”
—I want to like heaven
and so I dress the shore, waiting
but if it’s coming it’s slow
and I want to like heaven.

so I go
taming one star to another
till it’s light.

dizzy from the onslaught of the springtime I thank
my lucky stars for strings and steamboats I thank
my quiet mind for resting sometimes I think
my lungs are stretching in your absence I worry
that I ask too much of you

years of words on paper, meticulously folded, filed,
un-forgotten, found and re-found
so often as to tear the edges, smudge the ink
un-escape back into, trapped on the ferris wheel of
spotless rosy memory, broken-record memory, memory,
memory,
memorize, become

words on paper
words on palms
words and touches and sharp intakes of breath etched
and etched
and etched and—

now, we use disposable cameras
look at what’s in front of us
we’re starting to
remember how

long fingers against your shoulder, on your temple
soft mouth behind it—not anymore, but
it’s okay it’s okay.

a good listener and a good talker, and a mouth no closer now than a foot away
it’s okay it’s okay, and a handshake to close the deal
left open between your legs in winter.

it’s okay it’s okay. an almost-perfect parting, no closer than a foot away
but no farther than a mile, and “let’s still be friends” true and ringing
for the record books; for real.

and summer throwing states between you, but words to bridge the borders
and “I met this new guy” and “I think I’m gonna see that girl again”
and telephones, and postcards, and true-blue.

but
dark and sweaty july air and a visit and a cocktail
long fingers brush your temple by accident “oops I’m sorry!”
and
soft mouth behind it, close
no closer than a foot away—not anymore, it’s okay it’s okay.
and “let’s still be friends” muffled through your mouths and mouths
harder to understand, now

she bounced. up and down as she walked like the years she had
were lighterweight than everyone else’s. and she squinted in the bright light because her eyes were blue
but she kept them open as wide as she could to see all the flowers.
she was allergic to flowers. strangers on the corner told her “bless you”
when she sneezed. she was summer, in a way. her wild love for places
pulling ******* her wrist, moving her from bridge to bridge
sun browning her shoulders just so. and her wild love for people
pulling ******* her baby heartstrings, moving her from bridge to bridge
sun browning her shoulders just so. and her wild love for wild love
pulling ******* her belt loops, moving her from bridge to bridge
sun browning her shoulders just so.
and warm air all against her neck
and alive, always, but especially then.

a t-shirt loose framing my hips
i am typecast the antithesis
of your tight *** and your
grenadine lips
tight too for your own back but open
so open
for everyone else's business.

four years you've been together (he's so sweet)
you ignore his hard red hand and his tattoo--
he's all you've got
and you **** it up and smile and you drink till you're interesting
because they wouldn't like you if they knew you weren't
interesting and you'll never be more
than what you are, Small Town.

your eyes are surface-only and the brown that no one notices
except on you because you're better (you tell yourself)
you give hell to yourself
baby you could tell yourself the truth (but don't tell him)

                and you look at me like i am nothing.

but i'm buoyant, you know, the antithesis of
your solid sinking rock heart

                i look back like i am everything.

grenadine smiles only sick-sweet and those
surface eyes make sad effort to hide infernos
i'm on fire, though
and to put it bluntly
it is brighter than yours.

the t-shirt's loose around my hips,
but they are there, underneath (where are yours?)
and my lips are tight only when you're here.
you look at me like i am nothing. i am everything, and
no words will break you (more than you are already broken).

                my eyes are blue and my smile is real, and
                no words will break me either.

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.

high voiced Irishmen and spun sugar turned to
teenaged dreams and a teenaged circus

cold beaches in October like candlewax and promises
to call
bacon on the stove and cemetery gates and no one
to answer

if-this-was-the-cold-war to
this-is-the-*******-cold-war to
how'd-you-ever-get-so-blind

to the summer of warm warm warm and
the nights you'd have wanted at
sixteen and twenty
if you'd thought about it

and the big empty road in front of you that
under Orion's patent-leather belt looks so
not empty

how you're tall
and freewheeling

but not without

they tell you that you can’t go home
bound by street lamps calculus and city boys
you are wearing a blazer as we speak and
your prom queen’s popping out another
forgettable night bearing down on you where
your streets aren’t made of cobblestone and
everybody talks like each other
and you can’t go home maybe but
you can’t stay either

how many stories can we pour into our
summertime beer steins
how much before the foam spills over
into real-time

there’s no numerical answer to that, let’s state plainly
bubbles geometrically become one another, shrink
and multiply and turn amber-red in the august nightshade

and dogs skitter under basketball hoops, couples play in shadow
fathers sneeze and industry marches on
under our noses, outside our windows, between our ribs
how many stories can we swallow
before we’re drunk on the skyline and the view to the next

does it matter?

that one brew is for sale only in midtown
and sometime I might go back, drink it with you not there
watch the spinning hexagon floor tiles
and I’ll write you that I had it, and it was
all right

how many stories can we fit into the new year
stuff into the hamper, hide in creases of the couch
like quarters
like hands on knees, yours, yeah, the soft elegant spider-hands I
wanted on my knees since the first day—
two perfect hands

how many stories can we write on our palms
as reminders, how many can we fit between appointments

the ending’s not so important, is it—
bubbles join together, multiply, change shape
go hexagonal, spin
touch, remember, forget, divide
always even numbers

just shy of eleven
shy of prime

but amber-red in august
like that first time

there’s an art to
pouring a guinness
to make it taste like
chocolate and
the idea of her

and there’s an art to
smirking at bad puns and
positioning your fingers
on imagined guitar strings
before you pull the rug
out from under her

and there’s an art
to doing both by accident
and realizing one tuesday
the next year

I noticed that you left a footprint on my patio
the brand of your sneaker stamped across it, it was the shape of North America
and that’s where you were, quietly moving through
my little city, my little between-the-ears
my little muscles, contracting with the thought of you
expanding like the thought of you
when you are gone, and I only see the ghost of your misshapen bootsole
it moves faster than a train, and I only know that you are in North America
and it is too big to find your small quick step
but I sometimes remember that you are North America
and then I feel you everywhere.

A lion, all gold and sand and sunset, wandered
into a suburban living room,
curled up beneath the pendulum clock,
and lay against the leather couch.
The family—a husband, a wife, a teenage
daughter—were gentle. They looked at this
king at their feet, and had no thought to hurt him.
They had lost their dog, and were in the market
for soft company.

The girl named the lion Frederick. She read him stories.
She took him to the window, and showed him the
fence around the yard.

The father scratched Frederick's ears each morning as he drank
his coffee and read the New York Times. The mother
cooed babytalk to him while she washed the dishes.

Frederick had no time to think. This was his home now,
he knew intellectually.

But his name was not Frederick. He felt that.
His claws were dull. His eyes
were half-mast, house-cat-sleepy, even with the sun.
He was not a house-cat, and he forgot.

They loved him
and they loved him
and they took the wild right out of him.

He was a year into his picket-fence when a scratch came at the
window in the evening mist.
A deer stopped in its tracks, locking eyes with Frederick,
unmoving.

Frederick stood, nudged open the door through which he’d come,
and roared. The deer fled.

The lion stretched his legs and and ambled out toward gold and sand and sunset. He did not look behind.

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

there have been so many
days gone in years
lost in years, etched in nothing

but this one
is somehow
etched everywhere

in your collarbone your tongue the lines
of your iris
in the stitch of your jeans

in raindrops and puddles
growing always
lightening the sidewalk when it dries

thunderchilled, shoulders icy
but only on the surface—
underneath, it’s
etched in everything

tears on the steering wheel blur taillights
into september-christmas. raindrops in the rearview
become transitory constellations. an overdue
stop home slides away.

home ceases to be fluid sentences: becomes periods,
exclamation points, question marks, parentheses. staccato whispers,
sweet reprieves, lunch breaks, sick days.

you fit where they’ve left space for you. you know the shortcuts
and the long ways and where to get a coffee. you know where your
head rests on his collarbone. you know when to come
and when to go.

and then you go. and it’s midnight where you’re going and the
winged streetlamps beat like a butterfly migraine, eyes threatening to
close before you’re home.

wait—
which one was home, again

"i'm tired and god
**** it i just want this day to be done.
that girl in the blue sweater makes too much noise
and i'm tired, okay? i'm tired."


"she is beautiful, just beautiful, and you can tell she doesn't
know it. i'm glad she can't see me staring and god, the way
her curls fall down her back like she dropped them there by accident.
she probably did."


"the great depression was a real *****."


"'thank god she's talking to me again. does this shirt make me
look fat? would she be ****** if i distracted her?
i don't think she even likes wuthering heights, anyway."


"i miss dancing so much. i love this book but not enough
to make up for the pain that's not in my feet anymore."


"i lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering
among the heath and hare-bells;
listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet
slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth."

one, two, three.
hours of sweater lines written on your cheek and
your undereye circles tender to touch and
water in both places and
your shallow breath, violent
saying you’re sorry, sounding like nothing.
sweater lines in the mirror and no way to make him know, and
what that does to you.
one, two, three—
what that does to you

one, two three.
remembering how you don’t like flowers, and
how you are supposed to, and
white knuckles
he asks you to explain.
if only

one, two, three.
four.
unplanned, the monster in the closet
that hasn’t brushed your open palm in years, and
you forgot.
he said don’t worry, once, it wasn’t real
it won’t ruin you
he said that

four.
backs against cold walls, this time, and
long long quiet.
one, two, three.
his undereyes, too, this time, and
your involuntary muscles, violent
unmetered, sorry,
always.
one, two, three, and

four

i never had the pleasure
but if i did--
the chance to know him or
just to shake his hand
maybe tell him how he fixed it
how he fixed me
from however many miles away
--i bet he'd have smiled
and been glad to meet me too

“let’s celebrate a beautiful year,”
said one particularly sentimental mosquito
on a sideways tree in central park.

she and five girlfriends floated down
and joined us by the earth.
they paused over me, breathing my air

then moved on, instead
choosing his calf muscle for their joie de vivre
—his blood is sweeter than mine.

It always rains on Thursdays
except this Thursday.

There were gray clouds still but a little strip of magic hour
And the orange-leaf tree who was early for autumn cast his leaf-shadow on the grass

And I thought

Hey
This is nice

i remember the time you told me that
ginger soup would cure my cold and that
eating pizza with a fork made me so strange
that you weren’t sure we could be friends
with a sideways smile lighting the corners
of your amber eyes

i was drinking wine from a jar cross-legged
finally bold enough to ask you over

and i wouldn’t let you kiss me but as you laced up your
boots for biting february, i called out to you that i’d changed my mind
and you kissed me so **** hard it nearly hurt
but it didn’t

a year later, cross-legged again
so many days between you and now and the fading
memory of your warm chest on my ear
and i wish i'd crawled inside the ticking clock that day
tucked the minute hand into my elbow crook
and stayed

what do you learn but how to close your door when it’s coming
what do you
what do you learn but how to only whisper, never yell
only let them see you when you’re pretty
only let him touch you when you’re cold

since the morning you allowed it I’ve taken full advantage of your loving me
I’ve watered my impatiens with your loving me
I’ve thrown back my gin and tonics with your loving me in mind

and I haven’t paid it forward
I haven’t paid it lateral
I haven’t paid
haven’t paid for anything
and they’re catching up to me
the barkeep thinks I’m new in town
the doorman shakes his head

and the door keeps revolving as he stays obsolete

I keep loving you inside my scarf
and the wind takes it
when february comes

small pieces of paper stuck to her molars
she wasn’t from the country she said she was from
ex-PAT! her charming garbled R’s were
gone that one night.

we all said, J’ACCUSE! and she was like, what
because she wasn’t french.
she could’ve passed though,

if she kept her tongue quiet. I mean,
it moved the right way, at least.
and she was beautiful, if I may speak so plainly
and very susceptible to the cold—
blue-white hands tucked up into sleeves
when she sat hunched over with a hot tea listening
to a radio broadcast from 1970.

it was in san francisco that she fell in love
(not with anyone in particular, but that’s almost
always how it works, non?)
after 1970, but she hardly knew the difference
except that the cars were more aerodynamic
and all the boys had names like Blake and James
and Noah and it was harder to come by a bed for the night.

she had small lungs, the better for whispering, but she
felt like she was more grand than a whisper.

french girls could whisper and still be grand (ma chérie)
so when she packed up and erased the country, she took
a new name, more cosmopolitan, with her,

ma chérie.

home is where the
dog died
where the carvings in the walls say
I heart ryan four ever

or it used to be

I could etch the rooftiles of the
abandoned hot dog stand in foil
from blindfolded memory I know these walls

I could drive drunk from 111 to 25
unbury the spare key where
hannah used to live
I could
recite the streets and pebbles between yours and mine

but they say you can’t go home again
you can’t go home again
you can’t go
not again

crash crash crash was the calm smooth
hudson current
percolating like your
electric kettle soul
earl grey hands wrapped around

crash on the pillowtop
the closest thing to injury you knew
the still crash the
crash they bottle on the radio for you
crash lulls you to sleep
crash crash crash all you heard
all you wanted all you didn’t know—

mirrors shatter
mercedes tangle with birchbark
little quarterbacks forget their names at 22


hello?



he drops the phone
forgets how to
pick it up
you fall in line
try to
forget too

it was
in the congregation of ochre skin around his knuckle
that I knew to feel more coarse but more detail-attentive than the skin of his cheek, and it was in
the ribbing of his t-shirt, and in his ribs.
when I kissed his mouth that Saturday, we thought quietly together
“we are kissing on the mouth, we are kissing we are kissing”

tonight, when I kiss his knuckle almost imperceptibly,
I cannot hear his thoughts, and mine are “I would sooner be nowhere else”
and “happy birthday” and “I’ll need a haircut in a week or two”

my natural eye, and your new hip moon
and your hips, sharp hip bones and forgetting that
I could use somebody—
you never forget

the floor with imperceptible scratches
our bootsoles tracking cold sand and—

where we buried the key
you never forget

I like when you sneak glances
at my paper, at my tongue

I miss the shudder in my knees when
we passed the City skyline
it was better than the first time

you never forget

you tell him things like
hey I’m drunk I’m ha ha ha
come join me, it’s
ra-vish-ing

he thinks you’re
just so **** fun
and he thinks you're
ra-vish-ing

but sometimes he says
no
he’s elsewhere
got
things to do

and if he saw your cheeks, those nights
he’d think twice about the others

it’s just smile, tilt your head
artistically—it’s anything you wanted
it’s in that pretty limbo, that hole in time where you could have it
anything

but then they took your freckles off one by one
paint—white paint—as much soul as you could cover
they cover that hole in time
and you cannot lean back

sweat under all the layers and taking off your shoes
a hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone
and family photos, muscles, armymen
just a little off-center and you can’t place why
just smile, tilt your head

it doesn’t work now

watch watch watched
me, watch you, watched your skin turn young again
the night change to early stories lost in
fall grass, august-headed unseasonable warm
and orange, and rose, and daisy-chain

watch your skin turn young again
in summer, not summer anymore but still
something that looks
a little like summer
windows ajar and knuckles *****, cracked
and red with god and icy providence
your skin, so young so genius so young
again

I knew your laugh one april I’d
forgotten it by may and I
remembered
forgot
remembered in june
your pulse in my eardrums when I
found your chest here and when it was in the city
me, under a blanket
in a time warp
in the metropolitan area but not
close
enough

san francisco wouldn’t have me like boston
lusted after lusted after lustedafteryou
bridges held by strings lusted after you
tonight, and that night, and the halves of all of our nights
that I didn’t see, all those mouths
hands
blue-green beds lusted after you
a different end oh oh
oh, I saw it coming

that warm thing that salty distance thing, sometimes
that’s why you leave that’s why
anybody leaves
winemouths, unrecollections
mouths sour
oh that’s why honey
anybody leaves

autumn heaven gave way to the winter couch
chests by necessity warm with the
warm beats of memory
multiples of seven on the parting finish parting palms
on leather
leather and a refuge fantasy
nineteen
or twenty

the shoulders of a soldier of the soldier of the soldier
that you should have could have been—

dreams and cheeks ready came, after
pulling blood and fingers and sons through slowthinking hips
sharp with the thought of your laugh and lips
broken record touched
sorry
sorry
sorrysorrysorry I’m
so
sorry—

can you remember?
the rains are a little alive the
living rains are a little memory of the
little sweet high
the little clocks
barely
waiting underneath the ghost of the second afternoon train

my bones were fragile in january are fragile in january please
keep touches brief keep touches soft keep touches to the city
only in the camera lens keep touches to the curtains to the kitchen to the
hy-
po-
the-
tic—
don’t make me give it a name
just be my brother don’t
let me give it a name
(four
ever
forever
sunset
stop me)

goodbye was to be navy and floor-grazing and in my own
words. that evening you were to buy me flowers for the first time
despite how adamantly I didn’t ever want flowers for those months
you were to know I was wrong that last time
I was to smile at you and cry in the bathroom for the knowing that was
it

but evening walked too quickly and spoke hell
the language not the word, my language not your word
I only understood the skyline
you only understood numbers
let’s make a deal, you said, as the sunshine made its last orange address

let’s make a deal, I agreed.

stumbling like sugar like horses like homeless like
muscles literature-fixed and all brown-bricks
grandiose and unready. grandiose and unready.
grand. ready. no—

so—

stumbling through the seasons through the ceilings we became a mid-march anachronism
nothing to lose
nothing to lose
nothing-to-lose
nothing
nothing to
lose

nothing

can we just stay till the dawn
it’ll be fun we’ll be fun we’ll have fun you’re fun
taste the minutes melt like rock sugar
watch the dust pillow from the middle
only human
fingertips feel the shakeshake and the desperate tears
in fabric

honey pearls
tiger hearts
scratch-blind highway floods
mad july
that july

where were you
where are you

and where am I

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.

you are shattered, so it goes
and the imperceptible adhesive from the
fallen framed photograph you
somethinged her—she was not in it—
she is on your hands
not in them

so it goes, the candle on the sill unlit
unstill
until
wax burns
fire goes
you are
never start
something
will end
never light a fire
never have a friend—

time makes a stopwatch of you
a spasm
a podium of her, all your something
stuck to your fingers

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.

the bitter and undersold other-edge of perfection
where it turns around twice and settles down among
stuffed turtles and hedgehogs and buries its nose in its tail
only to spring up at the noise of passing traffic or
loud voices next door or
a sigh
overtakes the perfect first face of it
the one you seek your whole life and that
comes for an instant before fading to gray
and you scold yourself for the growing thought that
it looked better from a distance

to find a place to call home
where the bed nests flush in the corner
and the arms don’t loosen till you say so

to show all of your teeth and blow away
the bombs and dark purple air that cloud your sleep
and invite you to stay a minute longer

to live in boxes if that would make you closer
to knowing what it’s like to be a maypole
or a wild turkey or a king

to square your shoulders when you walk
and when you shudder
and when you listen

to find a place to call home
where you can leave without asking
if it’ll be there still at dusk

you stand on the corner of your just-gone home, dirt from below the torn-up asphalt making its way beneath your sunglasses, the distance between now and then something you can no longer stretch your knees and step over. your first love is boarded up across the street, succumbed finally to the burn of nineteen’s shallow pockets and standing in the way of a new apartment complex. you walk on, humming so you can’t hear the heavy step of all that’s taking your place. it’s a strain on your ventricles, loving and losing and owning and letting go, when you’re here again. knowing the porch’s soft wood at number 18 while the door is bolted and a stranger’s boots line your closet floor.

it’s not all lockouts and dire prognoses. your tomorrow professes to accommodate a higher wattage than the sconces in your old room, and your visits taste like love and memory and breakfast, and his bed is warmer than your own because he’s in it, and he welcomes you home like that’s what it still is. it feels like he’s not wrong to say so—sometimes, you still belong there. cold coffee in hand from the farthest corner where they know your order still. an opinion on which pizza joint has better marinara. a favorite bathroom. an indelible mark on your old library desk. some of it is yours.

but some of it isn’t. some never was, and some has slipped through your fingers. you hum a little louder as the months go by and the boarded windows give way to a brand-new storefront—one that never knew you at nineteen—so you can’t hear the heavy step of all that’s taking your place. but you keep coming back.

grand(iose) gestures but constant assurance
Our Ceiling Is Low. Our Days Are Numbered,
let’s not do this anymore.
is that what we decided
let’s not do this anymore?
I’m drunk you’re drunk
Okay

grand(iose) gestures and lights out
and darkness fumbling and
I Don’t Know What I’m Doing
we’ll figure it out
and how low is our ceiling, did you say?
what number are we at now
three seven nine let’s say ten
let’s not do this anymore
just one more minute
Okay

grand(iose) gestures and breathing and
quiet and finally
and sleep-sweat and the wee hours
waning
let’s not do this anymore.
okay
Okay