we're standing at the corner of the
bar and for the first twenty minutes i'm
scared I didn't lock my car door.

I'm wondering why people are so fragile--
how some feel like staunch walls and others
bone china, how when you hold them, some
feel like they have been here and others like
they have been nowhere, as if you might
fall straight  through them because you
should know better than to lean on a shoji

When I touch people I feel their sadness--
bodies have shields but I've missed that
stair step, forgot there was a ledge there,
groped for the light switch and found                                air
he isn't a body, he's a hurt, a walking,
talking, immortalized pain.  


Sometimes I find myself desperately searching
for something witty, for a laugh, for an old topic
we've already discussed.   I ask did you get home safe?
by default because worry is the only place to go that's fair
territory, to care is to succeed, thrive in your propensity to brood

I'm still standing at the bar in a peach cardigan
the bartender squeezing in and out of the opening
and some biker with a gnarly gray beard buys us
shots of jameson which is pretty fitting but there's
still a full 4.30 worth of Redds in my hand that I
won't much touch--


Greetings from Inside My Head, a postcard I should
have sent out years ago, halls and halls of literature I've
written about each day, catalogued in scenarios, in fantasies
in trucks beds, events that lasted no longer than ten seconds
I've written monologues about people's fingers and how the
sunlight falls on different shoulders, every moment is a
stanza, every Alpha state a macrocosm, I'm in a room
full of well-oiled people and they're made up of tea
leaves, soot, black leather and molasses.

it's 11:33 and everyone's facing away from me for a moment
I keep telling Jessica she looks like she's crying, ironically, I didn't
know that's what happens when you're hammered.  I shake
someone's hand, my name is somewhere out there on the pool
table, knocked around and lost down a hole like a billiard ball
like with anything, comfort requires the right kind of place
with a specific time zone, the one that comes with certain
people and my clock keeps spinning,

spinning

spinning.

they seem to think I can heal you



they seem to think I can heal you,
but the truth is I can only be there
and when there are cracks in the ceiling
and the mountains are frozen or gently
rolling over mustard seeds, I will hold
fast to the one Mainstay and encourage
you to do so too--because I can't walk
with your legs or talk with your words
nor can I delve inside your dark waters
and know how to navigate your thoughts
that so often I won't understand--

and I won't change you because we will
be a team, a single cog rotating in a royal
body, bearing the heat and blows so that
when you are away and toiling, or burning
the sheets with newfound anger, I will
stand by and let your battles rage until
we meet on middle ground and grasp
each other's forearms in the dust, heaving.

with you, this will not be a game.  You will not
be a piece, a checker, a player. I will not move
you or take mallets to your foundation because
it will be mine too--I will not hate you because
that would be hating myself and I will not hate
myself because that would be hating you--

I will not question your love for me like I have
questioned the masses, because this love will
not be antiquated but fresh and ripe each
morning, anew with our combined inquiries
and issues of heart, barrels of quinoa to sink
our fingers into and count ceremoniously
each grain a celebration, a victory poured
over quiet nights shared between whispers
and hushed prayers

and though your initial compliments and flattery
fade away, when our first meeting has worn off--
no lit suppers but bowls of hot oatmeal on the
couch, when our voices have failed to address
the day and time has only built between our hips,
I will quietly say that                                                 I have missed you
because though we are one there will still be
wedges---doorstops, rocks and boulders and
great things that drop and slide between us
that find their way into fissures in our flawed
surface  


but

I will love you through that.

I will love you through each fight and missed
opportunity to apologize, every door closed a
little too hard, each cold dinner or syllable too
harshly spoken, when I send you
to the supermarket and you arrive with only
half of the groceries, when the world is splitting
in two and we are fleeing from city to city and I
can hardly recognize you through the grit and grime

I will love you.