Be subtle with how you feel
For not everyone has the strength to hold
The heaviness that you may bestow on their hearts
But forgive them
For they too
Will never know
True happiness
As they will also never know
True sadness, in your heart.

God will always forgive me.
It is in his vocation,
but I will always remember the mess.

I think sight is very much visceral, and
I will wonder about all the other times

that were like this.

Occasionally I'll
see her voice, in the current, up in the air
and a emphatic whisper washes behind my ear
like a stable vacuum, it is static.

And perhaps, even sometimes, in the street--
I'll watch the shadow of her figure.
And see the sweat
trickle
off her brow
onto her cheek.
Like a clogged siphon, it seeps.

Often, I will catch a glimpse of an
alabaster shoulder
or two.
Like drywall, they creak.

And always, but not at all, I sometimes
hold my breath long enough, and hear my heartbeat.
If I hold it longer, I hear yours.

Maybe I'm too accustomed to your being.  I’m too forgetful of mine.

I led her down the river, but she treated herself as if she was not there,
as if she did not want to hold my hand,
but I'd see the spaces between her fingers flap and rustle
and her joints would crack
for some in-between hand, or object to hold

We looked at the river, it was
mighty fine and blue,
blue like her dress, and blue like my shoes.

It was like that one day,
in July, where she and I snuck into that hole-in-earth, the hole, smack dab into the center of the dry river. It was where she taught me how to smoke,
and I would then unravel her dress from her body, on concrete,
and sneak a quick touch,
or two.

We looked at the river, and I led her here,
by myself.
It was quiet, running, and grey,
but loud.

We looked at the river,
and it reminded me of you.

You find the reason to everything and anything because
it makes you feel safe, but I
--can't kiss you without you
wanting to tell me that
my eyelids flutter because my eyes
get dry and they need to protect themselves from all the
pathogenic **** that flutters around me but I'm
really just trying to get a better look at you,

why don’t you let me look at you.

Then I begin to cry and you say why tears are tears,
and that you wanted a “simple life” with me  but
youre too busy identifying the complexity of things
that you can’t even feel because they lay within your heart, not your hands.

I’m right in front of you but your
voice begins to raise and you speak the science of presence
and you tell me that i’m your soulmate because your subconscious doesn't always feel so alone when i’m standing right beside
you and that you need me to survive but you
can't always kiss me because you’re too busy saying that the reason why
I think you taste good
when you kiss me is because
we meant are for each other.

While I’m in your arms you begin to analyze
my paragraph of life and how
it fits so perfectly beneath yours.
But then you rearrange your words
and place some in between mine
and then I realize I’m the just the loosely placed parenthesis around your
syntax of life.

They say falling in love is not easy, but all it takes is a shot glass glance, and no sooner than later you’ll look at her profile in the dim light, and you’re in love.

Everything then becomes crimsoned, not because you are in a pub,
but rather because it is the shade of passion,
love.
And no sooner than now, you are dreaming of throwing your hands beneath her dress,
and thinking of mouthing, “I love you” from your eyes, to hers.

But no, she does not walk up to you, and you feel that the stereotypical misconception of a woman never making the first move, is true.

This is a man’s work, you tell yourself, dubiously forgetting what too lies between your legs, is nothing that of a man.

You’re intoxicant now, perhaps from the four Pabsts you've downed because you’re cheap and cool,
and you are incoherently waltzing
on over to her, and of course she smiles,
either because you look like an idiot,
or because she is charmed.

You cup your hands on her face.
The skin is soft, she says nothing,
but feels warm.

This is not love. You’re just drunk.