Waiting on Haight, ******* the gold beading of a thrifted 80s shirt inside my purse,
I listen for the 71.

He tells me, from under a nose cherry-red and with a cantaloupe and a spoon resting in his lap,
of how when he was 25, he holed up with an 18 year-old girl.

One night she leaves for an ex-boyfriend's, saying she felt compelled to him, like there was a magnet between them. And he said he went to the closet, he smelled her sweater and knew what he wanted.

He got some cardboard and fashioned a fake magnet, the classic horseshoe shaped and silver-tipped kind, out of cardboard. He turned it into a necklace and waited for a day with some red roses for her to get back.

She came back and said she couldn't remember the last time someone got her flowers. And then she called her mother, and her mother asked him sternly if he was planning to marry her.
He was bewildered a little, but he said yes (this was the sixties).
And he finished the call to her mother and she was standing with her hands on her hips, "Well?"
"Well what?"
"Aren't you going to ask me to marry you?"
(I laughed at this point)
"Oh..."
                                                  ­                                        . . .
"Will you marry me?"
"Yes!"

I asked what happened and he said they were together for three years. But it was a blissful three years.

He asked me if it was a good idea for a movie.
I said yes. But I probably wouldn't see that movie. I left that second part out.

Angles of pulled, wrinkled eyelids with blood pooling underneath from long nights of looking at computer screens, searching for the next thing thing thing thing done (chimes)

that is he,
and I am me.

Authentically contrived. Do I dare say that? Weeks upon minutes of pulling clothes, tucked tags, and waiting, oh the waiting, and I don't know what to say.
I can't believe you like me. I can believe it fully. You bought me. You bought my story.

And it's the truth but I can't say the unspeakable real truth because it's a hollow
crisp lying dead and bloodless in a locker in the basement below the deepest rungs of my head
and I am cloaked in schemes and drama and white lies because I want to tell you of a better me

Because the truth *****.
And I miss him
And I miss him
And I miss them all in different ways, whether it be months, a night, a meal, or a glance shared,
I listened to what I wanted to and now I have learned.

You with your small hands.
You with your lisped words.
You with your pierced lips.
You with your soft, smooth thighs.
You with your stick and poke tattoos.
You with your faded green hair.
You with your German words

And you, with your dark eyebrows that look like a storm. You were made for brooding and I saw.

I miss you. But I don't want to have to ask for anything unless you wish to give.

and sitting in the corner of a blessedly quiet McDonalds that is so old they haven't changed their booths to be uncomfortable to sit in, yet and wearing a black dress suited for vamps,
tarnished serpentine earrings whispering in my ears

not yet not yet not yet

speaking also to the stolen ring in my bag
that I am not yet a bougie eccentric

made to burn money and carry cigarette wands
and travel to tangier and have a little exotic pet

until I become more educated, eloquent, work on
my elocution until I am someone, who's someone

that deserves and has the gall to take, and possess
the world's most most beautiful blue wolf fur coat

spiky hair that I clutch too hard when I'm drunk
and you write twee that makes my heart both sad and leap

with the joy of a pied piper

and you

and you
and you
and you have a cute smile, shy, teeth

"I was in a band for two weeks in college. I wanted to get ******."

and you play the only song you wrote in college for me
nd. you wrote a song
for a girl you met on the internet
and I closed my eyes when you played so you wouldn't get self-concious

and you play Bright Eyes

and I like you
and you like me.

can I

just
    watch

                        quietly
while you

                                                   glow?

I click out of garish pop-up, eyes burnt from the white, and lick my lips.

Cheese. Grease. Onions. Oregano.

as I don't do the dishes and the beer bottles mount an army around my room,
holding their necks in an offended reaction to my distasteful behavior.

I sit here and try my darndest not to spend money because it seems
possession are the only thing that can fill my holes fully while I lie here empty

wishing I had something living in this room

and thinking about how I should take a poll
of how many boys I've been with that wear
old spice.

I am successful, on paper. But.

If attachment is suffering, then why does being desensitized feel so brittle and empty (?) .

Don't answer that question. I don't know how much of it is a lie.