I ache with how much I want to do nothing.
I want to listen to someone else sing,
and live in someone else's life with my legs
crossed until they go numb, the dregs
at the bottom of my mug unnoticed and the
feeling gone, focusing on living unfocused.

I want to hear someone else speak silently, I
don't want to say a word, and when one defiantly
speaks out loud I want the sound to be blurred like
my vision because I've left my glasses on a stack
of books somewhere and I don't want to see
anything farther away than what's in front of me,
don't want to hear anything that makes noise,
nothing that destroys,
only things that build the life of another,
I want to cover my mind with yours and live under
it for a while, stumbling through my life blindly
because yours is right against my eyes, so close
I can hardly see,
and I want us to live like that, blind, tucked away,
you and me.

Where does pumpkin pie go
to die
in the spring, when everything
smells like pollen or else nothing,
air conditioning sterilizing the air
into bits while everyone sits stuck
to their chairs and
if there’s a scent in the room
someone asks what’s gone wrong
but scent is right sight is
blind he couldn’t
smell carbon monoxide

Nothing comes to life in the spring,
it springs back to life
it wasn’t dead, it’s
back, from dormancy, it wakes
up,
and everyone knows the dream
is better than the reality

But in the season of warm pies
when air smells of cold,
I can taste the snow and I can
taste the sky,
and everything is bright
and snow appears to swirl not down
but up all around and your eyes are
just the shade of brown
that can
probably smell cardamom, or
cinnamon spiraling in chai and
he smelled warm fire and cool
sky and it kept him alive
and olfaction, olfaction
the only sense we can’t remember
technically
with neurons but we hold it anyway
because sight is blind
and come May—

I can't keep the colour of the sky.
I can't keep wanting to try
but this camera won't focus on things
that are too close up so if I'm not going to lie
I have to say
I'm a little glad you're so far away.
I wrote it down for you, the colour,
and you can read it to another
or copy it in your handwriting
so the words pale away from my slanted ink
to the link
in the stratosphere and are now reigniting
on paper you've touched that I've never
known as such.
I hope you use it to start a fire so I can
see your smoke clear
and I hope it doesn't change the colour
of the sky that I hear.

The no-two-snowflakes
phenomenon set my brain
off into a million different
fragments of star, each
looking down on the world
from afar.

You were already up
there, just waiting
to tear
it apart, or maybe not.
You didn’t need sweet
tea so you swirled in
apathy where I took
honey, and you turned
to the screen while
I watched the sheen
of gold
protecting little pockets
of air like they were
all that mattered.
If I protected you that way
you’d say you weren’t
worth my time.
No time is worth
anything, when you’re
going to run out.

Run out to where?

We took still lives in
photography but I couldn’t
bring in honey or pockets
of air or the raindrop
that froze on the airplane
window with ice shattering
and spiraling up around
it, but with the intent to
put the stardust in everything
I touched I arranged
the things for us
since you had something
kind of maybe more important
to do.
You like orange, right?
Yours still looked better
than mine.

Your mind is still in flight.
I wonder if you see the
fragments of ice
on the window of the
emergency exit row.

So snowflakes are no different
than fingerprints,
and neither is made
of stardust bright enough
to make sense
to you.
We’ll all be up there
soon enough, you say.
Whether stardust
or dust.
You love Mersault,
in an indifferent sort
of way.

But I zoom in on these
oranges and the ridges don’t
match, the RGB codes of
every combination of
orange shadow are off
by a letter
and no two oranges are
the same, I take two
photos without moving the camera
and yet something’s
changed.

It takes conscious effort
for me to be the type
of person I’d be friends with
but you do it so easily.
And if you recognize
that as unusual, it’s
one of a kind
just like everything else.

No two anything.
No matter what I look
at, it’s
still life
and I’m still living it.

It’s a hard choice.
You made the same one.
But it was different.

Look up.

Little gold arms and legs
dance below a little
fake diamond head.
Little gold chain around
my neck that had been
around yours instead.
Little gold ribbon around
the box,
long thin gray box
with the little gold person
inside.

I don't know what
you are trying to tell
me but I know what
I'm hearing.

You wanted a man
for me but you gave
it to me in a coffin,
thin and gray like
my soul,
but your ribbon outside
was alive and gold.

The ruby heart-red body
was fake.
So I can't accept
your dead concept
of man,
but the least I can do
is move the little gold
arms and legs
and thank you.

After every word I say
I think about how I'll cringe
as I walk away
from you,
just from thinking.

I can't deal with this sunshine,
this vastness of sky
like this whole **** planet
is a collective spy
on the universe,
and some of us are afraid
and some of us are too brave.
Some of us choose science
as a faith
and are let down when we
can't get far, bound to
be lost within this vast collection
of stars that no longer
exist.

Some can't resist
the pull of gravity and so remain
here, a pin on a pin cushion
in suspended animation; the
pins come and go but the
cushion's still got the holes.
And some can't resist the
pull of nothingness,
to drop out of gravity,
from a needle in a haystack
to a needle in the sea
to a needle in infinity,
that is to say, basically,
D.N.E.

I am unbearably light,
with no one knows how far
to fall.

When the clouds cover
everything a lid hovers
over the glass jar of the universe,
and a needle could break through
but at least there is some
resistance, at least there is
some effort put into keeping us
within this section of
stratosphere.
Maybe we belong here.

It takes effort to fall off the
planet, but none at all
to fall
down.

I am drawing lines
in the sky.
A carefully engineered
map of whys,
of stars connected
by thin pencil lines

stars are exploding light
but you are graphite,
(the pencil lead but
insight)
conducting the chaos,
in your element.
Stability that can hold
the heat,
and diamonds are tough
but they are just carbon
and you are so
much more.