Gravity Works

Is it weird that I miss you? (Some days I worry, and some days I hate, and some days I wonder.)
Not like I do anything to remedy it. Because you’re still under my fingernails, you know. How pointless.

If I could I would spend the rest of the summer under a tree in a kiddie pool. I wouldn’t eat or sleep. I would just sit in the water, and occasionally I’d put my head under when I started to think about past transgressions.

So this is kind of how it all worked:

1.) You said my name.
2.) I said yours.
3.) Our bones collided.

We compose our lives in the same way a piece of music is composed.
We take accidents, coincidences, and we transform them into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of our lives.

So when I hear that song I think of you.
Not because I hadn’t heard the song a million times before, not because I hadn’t seen your face countless times previous.
Because, without realizing it, we composed our lives guided by a search for something.

And it was in that moment I accidentally became aware of that something in your face and that song at the same time. Coincidence. An accident.
Making our lives a series of accidents that we piece together to make something coherent. Something that makes sense for us.
You made sense for me in that moment.

And now I will never be able to forget that the two go together; the music and your face.

Courage is releasing the seemingly secure. There is no real security in something you must suffocate to keep. You only suffocate yourself in the process. There is more life in movement and more power in change. You must be willing to sacrifice what you are for what you will become. Where have I heard that? It’s paddling around in my ear canal.

We can’t be afraid of suffering. Suffering is what makes us alive. We know when we struggle that there is goodness somewhere for us we are struggling for. Bravery requires patience too. Despite the wrenching pain.
Whatever else there is, courage is the ability to stand up for yourself. Do not allow yourself to lie. Do not allow yourself to hide. Do not allow yourself to blame. The best way out is always through.

[1]
my greatest pretenses are built
to hide the sliver of emptiness i keep
wedged in the pink of my chest
i find it difficult to hide what isn’t there

my mind has thunderstorms, that brood
for heavy hours
i don’t need to be fixed or found
i need to hide this,
need to lick this off my lips

i’m so bloodthirsty i have the hiccups


[2]
they meet

what grew what grew

when i see you a parade sounds in my ears. for each word that you say there is a ticking my heart that i misinterpret as the sound of my elation when in fact it is the sound of a reactor that is about to melt. but neither of us know it yet.

i know it isn’t right, i know it is disaster, but our minds aren’t working those kind of equations anymore. we live in a world of our own making, with our own rules. we eat and breathe each other and at night we sleep so wrapped up that we become undistinguishable as separate beings. we are transported to a time in our minds when no one has ever known us apart.

we are a secret. we are dying to escape.

we get caught.

[3]

i could fill up this lake we sleep on with all the things i didn’t say

but they wouldn’t have changed your mind

i was holding on to make a point

i couldn’t tell it was over by the way you said my name

i couldn’t tell by your sincere skin folding over mine

i couldn’t know by how you smiled and how we played

but i knew by the way your eyes changed colors

that soft, graying sea into a guilty chlorine

this is the first time that i love you

and god i mean it

god do i mean it

then the long, hot disappointment

you left me with nothing, but i’d worked with less

the forgetting defines me

[4]
i know we’ve done this all before, but once more couldn’t hurt
so let’s do it once more
bereft of ideas

it isn’t the rush of remembering

the forgetting defines me.


i live here, but i am a sightseer

you are my chronic disorder, i think out loud
you are my mild mania
you are my unsolvable math problem
my moonlight sonata on an untuned piano
the long stairway, the weak heart, the tar in my lungs, the breath in the cracks of the streets

you are the chemicals i keep in my brain and my bloodstream
and all the things you took from me

you are the bells in the air on lonely sundays

[5]

there is a happy soberness to knowing you are here with me

and a sloppy drunkenness to how we began

i can feel the force of it all taking me down

at night i have dreams of our daughters

and sons

and the constant reminder of your glance towards mine

like a shot from a film

about two people who didn’t know they loved each other

until they did

distance shows your silhouette, circling in my mind
like a sphere is a sphere, you are mine to keep
even when you’re far away

I suffocate on my patience. I count down the hours in the sweetest breathlessness.
Because I love you, I let you, I need you like the oyster needs her tongue to walk the ocean floor,
like the lightning loves the tall waves,
I blissfully electrify in the moments you are touching me.

I miss you.

I live here, but I’m just a sightseer when you’re not around. I’m an aimless apartment tourist. Bereft of ideas I wander - the kitchen, the couch, turn on the tv, turn off the tv, breathe quietly, uncertain in the silence. I toss around the blankets at night, shifting to find a comfortable spot, but the truth is there is no comfortable spot. Not in the bed, not in the kitchen, or on the couch, not without you.

Being in love is madness. My heart feels stretched all day long when you’re gone. My life shrinks while I’m waiting for you. The world feels depopulated. Time goes by so slowly.

1-2-3-4. I count to make you come back. Like clicking my heels to go home.
I’m clicking my tongue just to make noise, watching the cat sleep next to the front door. She’s waiting for you too.

Moments when things happen rapdily flashing by us and in slow motion at the same time are when you know you’re in two new dimensions. Depending on the state of mind, depending on the adventure time might push you off the cliff and catch you all at once.

If good things happen to those who hustle then is despair such a bad things? It pushes us all into hasty decisions. Love can transform a person, but despair does the job more quickly.

How does light enter a house? Through the open windows.
How does light enter a person?