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.

Post-Summer Show

I'm sorry if you ever felt like you had to stop telling stories. I didn't want you to.

I had my own stories to tell and I wanted to know you knew, but it wasn't always obvious. I couldn't always tell you cared. You made listening to me look like a chore.

I'm sorry if I ever shifted the conversation when it was inappropriate to do so. I'm sorry for your loss. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you in the way I needed to be, but I'm mostly sorry your best friend bore witness. She didn't understand I was feeling protective.

And I'm sorry I'm not even sure if she is your best friend. But that's not on me anymore.

But to be the one. To really be the one. I tried to track the time, even when no one replied. I am assured I don't need to feel any certain way anymore anyway, that your happiness, no matter how much it meant to me, was never also mine.

I knew you were waiting just as much as me. There are no drive-bys, there are only miles away 20 minutes ago. There you are, but not outside my work anymore. There was one week, then there were three weeks. Now someone else helps me with the repairs. I haven't decided who yet. But there is no need there anymore.  

Last Time

II
After some finality, after finishing breakfast, after you are busy with your stories, yourself, you love you, when I am silent and you are left to solo activity, you primp, you convince yourself I am still in the same room.

Last of the Crises

I

There is some peaceful, personal, active thing I think less and less about, but am followed around and crowded in by.

If I promise to visit, to wear a helmet or a warm coat or a warm loaf of bread, then?

If I promise to find out that fullness, to float up and bloat and bob because of it?

If I fan out the flames, to foment, to do to do to do, ta da!

I see you making faces. I catch you spread out across town, and not a bit too thin nor none too soon. I anticipate every necessary adjustment, every necessary inch of you, every glottal stop, every down and out.

Whisper me back to life and where no one else is or let in, leave it all that much more space.

Room

In the belly of a bellow,

just past the halfway mark of winter,

our coughs and colds are less than daylong

and the heaving beast,

with whistling lungs,

with buckling, splintered legs

and shinier shoe polish camouflage,

creaks to a topple

to a wail of an out of tune crash of

too many voices.

Middle C is now Low D

and all the chords

are majorly mine,

piled in a puddle of cooling ivory,

stalling over sticky smudges,

popped knuckles rusted in place,

gracelessly getting to the next measure,

catching on to catching up,

off beat or rhythm, off key, out of tune,

out of time and town.

The dust alone dries out my voice,

and I cannot sing from the hoarseness

in a chorus, sing

in the absence

of Great Uncle Accompanist.

How did we get this knee deep

in scores, in piles of laundry and picture frames,

in the teeter tottering of imbalanced benches?

How did we get through the front door,

dead weight, wood, ivory, and Allah,

to suck up the space of a perfectly useful dining room

just to close the French doors behind us?

[retry]

How to make this meaningful

and clearly about you -

These are not possible selves you like;

these are not alternat[iv]e versions of me.

These are pictures of impossibilities.

There is dressing up in your absence. There is too old now [for now].

Your skin is not milky or porcelain, paste or paper

or translucent.

(But it IS one or all. I’m choosing better words for you. You deserve).

You are stretched over yourself, your frame of face

and veins

Pointing the way,

Soulless, ocular,

To more gloss.

Your hair leaves no room for movement

Or scalp.

But you are a head in a jar with unattended, buoyant limbs,

Lacking power over their placement,

They float alongside more bobbing and bobbling

As you pass and pinball.

to Yours truly.

Inaccurate Assessments: Part I - The Rant

I debate text message transposition. It is the year it is and I am indeed the least bit technophobic. I have grown into shutting down and out and, like my indulgence, have always tended toward it. I have prided myself on being stubbornly independent. I need no one and nothing, but my anonymous audience. Talking to myself has provided me with the necessary reprieve.

This brings me to inaccurate assessments. I am collecting feedback. I am not a day over 22, I am scary intuitive, I looked so cute last night, and I despise you.

I will be gracious, but I will not be demeaned. Somewhere in some book, astrology reminded me I do not forget any transgression or moment of pain inflicted by another. For me, it is like muscle memory. My body reacts. I will hold onto it for years and fling it back in your face in my defense. I know just the hurtful thing to say to you.

Inaccurate assessments: I am a hypochondriac, you are sick of my illnesses, and I always have something to complain about. I am your most high-maintenance friend.

Unofficial poll: You know one thing and it is that I am always entertaining. I have just as much to complain about as any other smart person. I am unattended.

I may tell you all about it, but I am in bed alone with all my sore throats, my low lows, the curveballs and inability to cope. I never ask for anything, but the opportunity to say it aloud. I never needed you. I have never asked. I am, for your own sake, just a drinking buddy.

I am increasingly aware of the melodrama. I pull back the reigns, shut down a little more, withdraw a little more, dim the lights, step back to observe, and am lonelier than ever. But loneliness has an undeservedly bad reputation. Any intended consequences or attempts to assuage my woes, temper my emotions, deserve a gentler and maybe more supportive approach.