i watch her pouring water out my only window
i worry if she hadn't gotten here in time
i would have been gone
i think to myself it must be hard not to drown
in such a funny shaped town

i see you. those remarkable features tucked in by the structure i crave. i love your face. but it contains that expression of yours that i can't trust.

if i tell you to tell me what's wrong, will i regret it?
because your expression now tends to look like the last page in a book i fell into, got dizzied by, and lost myself into

and my heart sinks to ground me back and hold me closer to the reality around me. once i finish reading you it's back to it now

i can't force myself to finish reading your face
if i finalize the dawn of this nightmare, and fully enter this cue to leave and put down this book
i accept the aftermath. tonight's energy will be an all-consuming emptiness
tonight i will feel nothing else but this
tonight i will cry to fill the hours because nothing else feels right
but mourning, mourning, and more of the mourning
all the way till morning! all the way till night!

then tomorrow i will call in sick at work.
i know i will not get up to shower, or throw away tear-stained tissues (of which there will be at least 53)
i know i will have a few missed calls from my mom and a lot of from my grandmother. i know my brother will drop by to tell me to call them back - someone, anyone. i know i will send him back there and he will hate me for the way i am. he will tell me this and i will use it as fuel to cry some more.
i know my best friend will leave me a few texts. i know some people, probably on the other side of the world, will remember they haven't checked up on me in a while and will probably decide to do so. i know they expect me to tell them i'm doing well (it's the polite thing to say), i know it would surprise them if i told them how i was really doing.

i know the world is busy and it will not stop because my world has.
i know this, and i know this, and i know this.
i see you, and i've read too many books about these kinds of endings, so somehow i have a good inclination as to what might follow. but i am a hopeless romantic -- at least, i am a hopeless literary, i am the girl who believes real life is ugly but real life in poetry can be beautiful.

so i hope, in the midst of the real life ugliness, that i can write some real life poetic beauty.

after i've finished crying tonight.

heavy paper won't float in the wind
or drown in the water
or give me papercuts like
thin paper does

i have never put my trust in a thing as much as i did my moleskin. her heavy paper called me to come clean and divulge within.

heavy paper looks me in the eye and swears to listen
heavy paper's blankness glistens

and won't i hurt her less tonight? give her less truth? give her less feeling? more imagination too?

heaviness, she's more like sturdiness, she doesn't crumple under my weight
she doesn't mind at all
that i don't know how to start a blank slate

she keeps me in her. my stories, my fears, my secrets.
i owe her all my gratitude.

but sometimes
the more she knows the more i remember the more
i need to tear her up to forget

did it work?
I give a useless tug on my skin, done to reassure me
instead it reaffirms to me:

I am, again, inconsolable.

is the mask I wear today sealed on tight? too tight?
does it hurt to pretend so much?

does it seem clear to anyone else that there are loose ends I've yet to tend to? backdoors I've overlooked?
transparencies?    can they see through me?

I bare my teeth. canines, canines from the days of carnivores.
am I that carnivore? in my genes I am.

and in practice?

inconsolable, uncontrollable
barely a threat in her form.

this question comes to me under many guises:
an old man asking me: are you that of practice or are you that of genes?
a professor lecturing: are you that of cultivated identity or that of inherited form?

my concerned friends crying:
who are you?
is your mask anything like you?

and then i wake.
it's a terror turned nightly chorus.
recurring nightmares, doctors offer.

i admit i know the content of my dreams to be unfounded:
in life there are no physical masks that do the jobs my terrors depict.
no veil to hide the contours of each flawed personality, no mask to others, just me, weeping-in-the-bathroom, never-myself me

and those attempted favours to be like one another
i'll be like you so you'll like me
i'll like you because i'm like you

so the body charges on in this society like a mirror
cross your left leg when she crosses her right, fold your arms when she's folded hers, raise your hand to say hello, raise your hand to say goodbye

a kiss on the right cheek, a kiss on the left, one more on the left
this is how you show love and a greeting all at once

fold your arms over each other, this is sympathy, this is greeting, do you take comfort in this too?

so you learn to speak with your arms, and you learn to speak with your legs, and you learn to speak with your face, and you learn to speak with your head.

soon your eyes are apprentices of acquaintances, learning to borrow looks like library books, take on others' stories like they've read them end to end.

so in the middle of this process you learn to effectively say:
i see you, i hear you, i perceive you.

and in these attempted favours, at the end of your night terrors, is the parrot that they want to see. the parrot that you argue, can't really be me.

i looked into you
familiar now, your glowing face, now that we've spent 35 summer days in each other's space
if i left now, every part of me would contain a trace
and no red flags i see
i say this
as hard as i believed

i confess i am still learning
every day about the nuances
what you like to do, what you don't like to do, what you used to like to do
but don't like to do anymore

and how i can be one of those things that you like to do
as hard as i believe

She traces her finger across my palm, her eyes not on my hands but on me. How does she know where to go?

Line by line. I read you line by line.

I have never been felt like I am felt by you.
What exactly do you call this? I ask

Discovering you, she answers. Unearthing you.

What about my fault lines?

What about your fault lines? She keeps tracing.

Are you avoiding them?

No, she says.

I am not scared of fault lines. I am not scared of a single earthquake originating from you. As long as it's yours, I am the world ready to be shaken to her core.

You're stupid for that.
I am keeping a lot from you.
You won't love me.
You will hurt. Stop unearthing.

She says she knows, on all counts. And I am not to worry, on all counts.

And like this she dismisses my concerns methodologically. And in this way I trust her.

And in this way my trust comes to a head, and I tell her something that she wouldn't have otherwise have known.

I felt you today.

I wish I could be felt by you everyday, she answers.

So I trace my hands on her face, not avoiding anything, trying intentionally to get to the fault line, trying to get an earthquake to start in her.

But nothing shakes.

my heart came to me to tell me she was on the verge of a realization
i was in my favorite state my state of bliss held together by the seams of denial i stitched myself. so i turned her away and told her to come back a year later
she agreed and said she would find me on the edge of myself

at which point i told her i would not be there if she looked for me. i would not be there on the edge of myself. i will have no more edges, i will have sanded all of them away
you will find my doors closed, and locked, and you need not enter.

i said come back a year later and you will not recognize me
come back a year later and you will not find me in a crowd of all the old mes

come back a year later and i will not be who you presume me to be
who you underestimated me to be

who you so sorely held onto the belief that i was.

if i got my revenge i would have broken all the windows in your house. to show you how violated i felt. this is how violated i felt.
like i was naked in my own spaces, like i was exposed in all the worst places, like i couldn't breathe without feeling a threat of a death on me. you said it would be on me if i left.