maybe i got caught up in that rustic
devil-may-care way that you leaned
on any counter, how the hot oil from
your grandmother's pans shot up and
flecked across the posterior of your
hand and you didn't even flinch, just
sort of sighed through your teeth
and how I spent the few seconds after
that wishing I could press myself against
your back because you are so solid.
But I digress, because I've learned that
idolizing people is a mess of self-inflicted
palsies

Nevertheless, my affinity for compounding
problems manifests in my lack of willpower,
in your forearms that are like thick bristlecone pine
branches, dry and scarred with your
obstinance--

and when you would go to wash your
hands, you'd roll your sleeves in
this rough, intensely **** manner
with your hip pushed up against
the lip of my sink, working the
dirt out of your knuckles.
So as you kneaded your fingers
back and forth; your Venke's
pulsing, I found myself to
be too hungry for you,
for this

I've never been around so much
man,  so much cord and bark
i've never touched a person and
not felt like I was going to slip
through them like some spectral
being, like their spine would
give way before they bend in
two around my palm, barely
grounded by their own
body weight.
The difference is (was?) that
you feel so full, so stalwart
and



(I got to thinking; maybe I wasn't ready.
Because for all your worth, all your
redeemable qualities, I'd cashed in on
the way you made me feel when
I hadn't for so long and that's not
the way I want to,
Not the way I
Want to
Not the
Way )

we are encouraged to be light
but I beseech you to be heavy--
with your skin and hair and every
bone, with your gossamery soul--
a soul that could sink ships,

be heavy, you are much.

you gave me a list of everyone
you'd kissed, not arbitrarily--
I'd asked. The way you ask
where the bathroom is or
for a glass of water, but
you sent me a full directory
of names, a rolling file of
women I didn't know but
would rake through the
similarities and try to define
your tastes, blonde, blonde...
blonde

When I asked you how many
people you had slept with, I was
lying on the floor picking at the red
threads in my carpet while you rolled
your heavy palms into my shoulders.
you stilled for a moment, sliding down
to the base of my hips

I dunno...five? Or ten...
I laughed and you loosened.
Well, I mean...define sleeping with.


to me there are not many definitions for
one thing, there are synonyms for *** but
none of them you really need

Just four, then.

What happened to the other six? Were they only
kind-of-sort-of's? if you didn't really feel them, did they ever exist?
if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around hear it, did you really sleep with her?

Later on you would casually mention that you were worried that's how I really kissed as if a peck could dictate a whole eight years of
kissing--and I was kind of offended. But then there's that list, the list of
all the trees in the forest that fell and the six that went missing and i think about how I can count the number of people i've slept with on
my pointer finger and how perhaps that doesn't even apply, do you pump gas for twenty seconds before the girls at the counter start crying?

suddenly there are experiences that you
have stamped into your belt and none where i've pretended to be
full of lusts and talents and shortcomings
really I'm just a baby, a wisp of cotton
yellow, so yellow
and you're a full bag of burlap and wire

I waste my time
with trivial things
trying to forget,
since I always do that
anyways

I floss my teeth
maybe twice,
Because my gums don't
remember if I have
already

Someone told me I looked
nice in the library today,
was I there?
I must have left my
books behind

And it seems I've burnt
the toast again,
I don't think I was
going to eat it
anyways

I sit on my bed
singing the words that
taste faintly familiar,
drifting
in and out of
dreams of
you.