I had my first kiss at the cinema, the contour of our silhouettes illuminated by the glow of the rolling credits. He tasted like Altoids and cigarettes, an ambivalent concoction of ice and fire. At one point, I'd bitten him by accident. Whether this was a manifestation of inexperience or (seductively, with heat in her eyes) hunger,  I'm not sure. But, sitting there in the thrill of My Something New, I was certain of one thing: this was a red carpet moment, the stuff of silver screens and glimmering Hollywood starlets and rows of type writer ribbon waiting to be transposed into something theatrical.

After the film, we sat outside a cafe a block over, the fever of summer adhering to the back of our necks like (giggling) misplaced hickeys. Smoke corkscrewing from the end of his parliament, he told me how John F. Kennedy was addicted to opioids. I couldn't help but think back to earlier that afternoon when he first admitted to being a smoker. How he'd asked me, "Is this going to be a problem for you?" hesitation rising up his throat like bile.

I smiled because 'Everyone's got their poison," I replied.  

And poison? Well, there's something so strikingly poetic about it, don't you agree?

(beat.)

JFK must have been Marilyn Monroe's poison, I think.

"So," I offered, "What do you really think happened to Marilyn Monroe?"

"How do you mean?" he said between drags of his cigarette.

"I mean was it really an overdose or--"

"Was it an assassination?" he interjected.

"Mhmmm."

Another drag of his cigarette.

"As they say, the simplest answer is often the correct one."

"Maybe. (beat.) But what makes for the better story?"

After two weeks of courtship, he took his leave. My mother's obvious, unwarranted disapproval was, perhaps, a source of anxiety for him. Me being freshly eighteen, he was also concerned about that (sarcastically) whoppin' three year age gap. (beat.) Not fully buying it, are ya?

Well, neither did I.

Here's my theory: his feelings (or lack thereof) were the reason he called it quits. And instead of being a man--instead of being honest, instead of owning up to the true nature of his intentions--he spun some relatively believable excuse. A coward's way of removing himself from a situation he doesn't want to be in. Surprisingly enough, I wasn't as disappointed as I would have anticipated, had I foreseen the end of our fleeting romance.

I was (beat.) fine.

It does make for a great story, after all. (wryly) But you knew that already.

Because for every Norma Jean, there's always a Marilyn Monroe.

Tell me then--who are you?

(beat.)

Girl curtsies, transitioning into a tableau of Marilyn Monroe's iconic pose wherein she attempts to hold down her dress as the air from a nearby subway grate threatens to expose her undergarments.

Lights fade out.

{Fin}

Since we last were here
the chairs have greyed with age

they, like us, were once a gentle blue
now they lay aching in the pre-show

the walls quake with the noise of decades
and the air is stained with concession salt

like living memories that were never ours
dissolving in the flicker of the picture

we remember so many first dates
and missed childhood kisses

that we forget the film
is even playing.

“it is not your job to interpret tears.”

There are ones that seem to fix everything.
Ones that gently shift the quiet tightening of your stomach to your chest all the way up to the microscopic peaks of your eyelashes
So the tears that follow might dilute the smile splayed so comfortably across your eager lips.
You decipher your interpretation of the human psyche through a screen
and make sense of the way we work with a language consisting of the perfect combination of camera and conversation
And stories
People
Stories about people
Movies about stories about people
Because what could possibly be more captivating
More beautifully unattainable than capturing that amazingly horribly complicated and endless plethora of confusing entities we labelled “emotions" caught inside the specks of dust brought to life by the light of a projection beam

In smiles exchanged through eyelines coupled with passing glances
Things that we know but yet somehow choose to forget
Things we hold familiar yet still at a safe distance too close to call far
Things that define us under the word “human” in an improbable world where the only certainty is knowing that we will never fully understand the sheer tremendous mass of what it really means to be alive.
What it really means to hurt.
What it means to know that there is unimaginable pain hidden away in bastions of solitude we never have enough energy to track down
Or place paper flag pins on just to remember where they were last seen.

But in these moments of utterly unmitigated bewilderment as to what the **** is happening inside our heads,
There is that same recognisable sense of comfort we can find in a bed
shared with someone else whose story we haven’t yet read
Shadowed by waves of apprehension tangled with fear and sheer joy at being reminded of what it is like to feel the unabashed velocity of every single one of your heartbeats again
dulled only by the confines of your sacred home of flesh and bone.

We gather without question
in darkened rooms only lit momentarily with hushed flickers
and the soft kiss of a silent stream of light carrying the burden of a story on it’s back
We sit the same way in synchronised straightforward stares
because sometimes we find it impossible to turn and face what it is we are most afraid of knowing
So within 3 walls and a never-ending silver plane of infinite realities
Some communicate with hesitant hands
clumsily clashing amid every popcorn induced action
And lingering touches in places we know all too well but are terrified of letting the other into
Memorise the way it felt to have shoulders happily heavy with holding a head up high for 90 minutes
and the fading imprint of their fingers as they grazed the small space of your lower back while you both exited stage left
Eyes dizzy and dreamy with what they had just witnessed
Thoughts shared and thoughts kept secret
Locked away for safe keeping because there are some revelations that have to deepen before they can be divulged to the company still beside you
already wondering when the next time will be before the credits have even concluded
“We should do this again sometime.”

And sometimes it’s easier to watch other people doing what we don’t do best
To see carefully constructed characters holding broken mirrors to our shattered internal anatomies
To see them go through things we ache to be reminded of
Or things we could never have considered imagining for the sake of understanding
We will continue to watch these people succeed within limits we can only dream of
But with every scene we see ourselves in
With every subdued smile and uncontrolled laugh
will come more hope
With every subtle tear and inconspicuous frown
will come more wisdom
As we continue to teach ourselves with the help of those who have made it their vocation to teach life through a language of moving pictures
To show us how to dissect the pieces of our world we don’t know how to disassemble  

We will keep trying to make sense of where exactly it is we come in the grand scheme of the ever-changing eclectic cosmos

I start my search in a cinema.

i'll bring you to me like i need it
because i do
that need for your lips
that need to be lost with you
the intoxication they provide
like a solemn deed set aside, that sincerity still resides

by waist i pull
by lips i speak and you listen without words
cheek to cheek
none will fulfill
fulfill what you mean to me
what you do to me
getting lost in the darkness of a cinema seat yet remaining still
getting lost in bedroom sheets yet remaining still

the words i struggle to say, here they lay
the map, thrown away
because
i lose myself
but i want to
i need to

Wordsworth bubbled in my cellophanate bath water
yesterday, at the candled hour.

whilst horse tails whinnied from Joshua Bell—
Tchaikovsky in brood, 1878.

Oh, but if I had thought to Bogart the whole affair, well,
I'd be a modern Michelangelo, a downright da Vinci—

a Dostoyevsky before the dawn—

propped between the cold **** and the hot,
wet behind the ears.

Then I turn the note-the page-the scene:
Don't try this at home, they echo in the shackles of

celebrity. A drowning horse has sounded better
than their confession of our normality.

Grab-*** is as far from **** as promiscuity
is from prostitution---
The Weinsteins move to Nigeria
to make Nollywood blockbusters
w/ kpop soundtracks---
big in China & Russia, making movie stars
of Ukrainian beauty queens driving drunk
at midnight in a country where grab-*** is okay
& homosexuality is illegal
& subject to the death penalty---
See beautiful African women
lining up to get their ***** felt
by the Jewish movie mogul
who can make them stars overnight---
Mathematically correct & joined by Chinese
& Indian beauty queens in a veritable renaissance
Of ***** men and women
who become bolder in public
than in private in speaking out against those
who promote the homosexual lifestyle;
‘**** them all!’ they cry
& the Nollywood industry cranks on---
American boycott the new Nollywood films
Which means nothing but free publicity
Since Asian people line up
around the block & ***** the ***** of women
in front of them & Russians
hail the resurgence of masculinity
when the life of Pushkin is made into a biopic
with a Russian cast in
a Russian-Nigerian co-production;
In Elizabethan theatre
(the height of the Renaissance in England)
Young boys played girls
& backstage got their butts dutifully reamed---
The universal irony that young boys
replaced women yet were *****
& molested as if they were---
European history has always been gay
from the Neanderthals who died out from ******
(the root of the myth of ***** & Gomorrah);
To the Greeks & Romans
to the Catholic Church---to gay marriage
to the rights of transgenders
to be treated like women & men except in reverse
which changes everything for everybody---
In Nigeria gay men are lynched by mobs
Of right-thinking citizens
who pay good dollars to see movies
Where some of the world’s most attractive women
get sodomized by rough,
burly macho male stars as if they were boys---
Nollywood becomes Nollyporn
becomes Nollyrape & sells around the world
bringing in millions & then billions---
while Americans & Europeans, Australians & Kiwis
adamantly promote the gay agenda
that is rejected by the rest of the world---