Wednesday, November 12, 2014

October 11, 2014
In October, I thought you came to share the bed with me, but you went to Paris. It was better when we were alone, but you went with the man of your dreams. I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t me. It wasn’t me worshipping you, it wasn’t our parallel narcissism. It wasn’t that self or partner congratulatory.

Who am I to coffee, to join in the wandering, to walk around with drink, drinks, or heaviness in hand?

To take yourself to Paris is forgivable, to track down my sister is a hook. But not a line nor sink me. To take the man who dials drunk and denounces your entire entirely tenuous circle with me at the beating beading heart to tell you about the kind of love that inspires you. To the evening post, against all of our agreements, everyone gets to see you out. But not me and that was my choice and it came as no surprise so don’t claim otherwise.

Can we unlearn all the known warmth and focus on all the connections we didn’t have? All the ways we didn’t understand each other? All the lapses in thin, flimsy, inspired selves?

I had thoughts about this. I thought about all of this, I brushed flies and feathers away, cleaned up after the rug and polished the wood floors with our sweat and our oil and deeply held beliefs, deep-seated connections, and I’m getting what it feels like when the bottom falls out beneath me. This sense of falling in love is similar to the sense of free falling, like a sudden drop in altitude, in cabin pressure, from roller coaster to consent. To cement to plugging in the AMP. To heavy, hurting, drumming something up in me.

October 18, 2014
I knew that all I had to do was look for you and I’d find not one or two, but zero imaginary paramours to sift through.

The first and foremost visits in just a few days. You will always be missing from here on out, out. Lost at sea, on hikes, on carvings on trees of you and me.

And calling on all content, there were no photos to prove otherwise or likewise or…?

I will lead. I will keep on the push. I will mind all the mistakes I keep on keeping on.

It is as if I lower the guitar, flatly and finally and finely, out of tune (out of time, the super-ordinate theme of no more).

I can’t hear you anymore. I don’t get to look at you. If all of my insides fail to catch up with the descent and cabin pressure drops as well, I put whatever caught my eye in a box high in a closet with jackets and coats with your name on them. What am I supposed to do with all the notes that said all the things I had always wanted to hear and got to hear from you?

I was insufferable. I had too many needs and you were never going to win. I know that. I realize the mistake. So I turn to other men who are meaningless and mindless and I have no expectations and no needs.

October 19, 2014
For many moments, distraction won’t be enough. All it takes is a shift to a sadder song with a lyric that jogs the memory. Last night I dreamt and dreamed that your ear was in my mouth and in a moment of sudden awareness, I apologized for forgetting we were trying to forget all about this. But we talked.

That is almost too much to bear the next morning. We talked! Ahh!

The bass fades away, the harmony is perfect, people rise and fall, but their voices consistently crescendo. I’m that swollen too. I swell, not from pride, but oceans and buoys.

October 19, 2014, Part B
Where are you? I’ve waited for your drive by. I mapped out my new cubicle. I wrote my sister the same letter you did, but the response was different.

October 25, 2014
You have ruined rose gold for me, but not all the bearded and beardless faces. You ruined watches and Naches for me. You have ruined babies and in-vitro and surrogacy and adoption and all the children – I hate them equally.

I’m settling back into that heavy, gilded shell. I’m a lonely prince again.

You’ve ruined the calling off, the calling out, the inevitable proposals, and you didn’t understand any of it. All you have is your power. And wherever the place is you need to be.