Here we are, now, who are we this time?
The sentiments are still the same, aren't
they always? We listen to the radio top
20 and we sing along, brazen like the
best of them. Today I'll be Achilles and
you can be Odysseus. No, not Patroclus,
this isn't like that and neither are we,
there's no room for speculation on what
we could be because that was last time,
last time I sat on your white bed and
you pinned my wrists down, I was ten
and you were twenty and god told you
to **** me and it ate you alive, when I
left you to go to the countryside, pregnant
with someone else's baby, was I ever your
baby? Maybe a few other, separate, parallel
lifetimes ago. If I'm Achilles then you have
to tell me when to go to war, you'll know
that I'll fight you every step of the way and
no, we don't love each other, but this is the
role you play this time and you'll do it for
me, won't you? Yes, and the next life, I'll be
a nice jazz tune that you turn on the radio
to and find yourself crying and aren't sure
why. we're still connected, even metal covered
in copper covered in your skin and sweat.
The next I can taste it, because you'll be the
****** drip as soon as it kicks in, but you have
to be the one that gets me dead at twenty-five,
so make sure you wait for my signal, my white
flag, like before when you watched me in the
garden, like before when you dragged me off
the dead body of my wartime lover, or when
we met in the rain in the romance novel yet
to be written and kissed and kissed and kissed
and, kissed. you are my friend. we will never
be separate. you are the love of all my lifetimes,
even the ones where we will never touch or
laugh or look each other in the eye, and even
especially then, because I'll still feel your atoms
and my atoms, the only home that can ever have
a name: the touch of something familiar. Siken
was right, I won't be waiting forever, there are
a hundred other me's to match you's and if this
ends all bright-white nuclear i'll still be standing
with the skin melted all off, poised and ready to
receive the next generation, and that's what i
thought of when you asked me if we were ever
sky giants, if we ever met before this moment,
and you thought because i was silent that i didn't
feel the same but baby, i do, and here is all of it,
our mythology, don't you feel it? the constant
reaching of me to you? the small hands covering
every inch of our mouths even when we don't
touch? Next time, I'll be a small hand and you'll
be a small hand, maybe then we can love properly.