jog shuttle to pause, play: rupture, rend, rive, split, cleave:
edited a past away.
what you thought would disappear lies and waits:
wednesdays are the days we fight.
i’d ask you to call, but i know money’s tight the true change of that transaction still punched through your face i’d call every day if i could, but we can’t.
january cuts a deeper distance and sometimes i can’t taste the words you type. you often remind me of just how fragile i try not to be but am.
once you told me i was asleep when you got out of bed, asleep but i still asked you if you were leaving and looked so sad; i’ve tried dying those reflexes to departures.
i wonder if i whispered;
it feels like i would have whispered it if asked not in sleeping, if asking awake,
if asking you to stay.
once you reached for the light switch and in doing so, a tear fell from your cheek to mine. i never told you that because i didn’t want you to know how close you’d come to breaking my heart with that tear.
once we didn’t shout over something about dinner but it felt like it, and i apologize for not remembering the specifics. i wanted you to leave the room so i could pull the bones from the chicken, and stood there listening to the hot fat silently burn my fingertips and hoping to hear you laugh at something the television could provide.
we’ve fallen, and we’ll stumble, still learning this and i know the insecurities have to be exhumed and waked. i’ve buried so many of my loves, and you met me in an interesting time, i’ll admit. i don’t doubt you.
smoking my last cigarette and the snow’s too deep today.
“come here.” i remember the shapes of those moments, the Modular Calculus we figure each time we assert.
how “I’ll be right back” palimpsests the variables with which i’ve measured times, two minutes, five. thirty, after fifty- nine, i shift to hours and trust you’ll be back eventually.
others never inspired such trust.
i think the definition of a partner is someone you always want near, but you aren’t afraid to let them wander because they come back.
our calculus is of additions: cats, green radios, our bed, our house, augmenting concepts of home with plural pronouns, subtracting places and histories with a honed methodological approach, methodically approaching methods of subverting: i’m a capitalist confused by your anarchies, but i’ll learn you through them.
i read fascination into you. all the internal conflicts and external dissatisfactions i learned a collection of decades ago to forget; you reopen convenient scars and ask me to look.
it helps that you hold my hand.
i can imagine your fingertips typing, those same fingertips i cradle with my tongue, tasting us, those tips urging words into action, the letters a confusion sometimes that adds to my wonder of the way your mind works.
our mathematics— i want to learn you and buy our cat.
paul hughes, come here.
i’d ask the same of you, but your name isn’t mine; i’ve had dreams that part of it will be. i’ve had dreams of entering that city in conquest with you. i’ve had dreams of a coastal life. i’ve
because i’ve never been loved like this.
but
a heart can only break so many times before you start to lose the important pieces
the nearest unsteady light the return of books or the brittle desire thereof t-shirts you will never wear again pajama pants too big for you too big for her
thursdays are the days we fade
a fist bundle of broken glass beating, chiming sunrises echoing, screaming loss each departure a new crack each departure a new opportunity for scar tissue to encapsulate for the appearance of normalcy but the grinding of the heart’s edges goes on.
the nearest unsteady light a burn barrel that wouldn’t accept the flowers i bought you the oven that ate the pumpkin pie i’ve put the rest of you in a box when are you coming? when are you coming?
please don’t ask if you don’t want my answer. please don’t ask if you don’t want me because i’m assembled from memories that could be lies missings so muches and i love you toos and i think of you all the times.
maybe it’s because you taught me how to play checkers
in bed
and i beat you the first time.
maybe only a poet could ever deserve to love you.
but i tried to learn your language
the subtleties and nuances of you
and there were great plains of you i never saw,
but i wanted to with everything i had.
which edges were lies?
that there are people who will wander the world,
never knowing the path of damage they leave behind,
always convincing themselves that it’s okay to walk away.
that we are downgraded.
that he hoped that someday, someone would feel for him a fraction of the love he jettisoned into the world.
that there are people who deserve your touch more than i ever could.
that there are some trips you have to take alone.
that i am faithful to dead causes.
that there are no second chances and barely any firsts.
that we can be cheated of futures that were never ours.
that i will never forget the airport.
that i put holes in my body.
that we ran through a city and we were in love.
that i’d go around by Doney’s
to see you once more.
to laugh at that.
with you.
you told me where i stood.
i fell down.
to learn that language, to speak with your tongue
i’ve forgotten your taste but only mostly.
you were imprinted.
you’ve given me a window to count every fiber of my being, and every one agrees:
my worth has an inverse relationship to proximity.
maybe if i were a poet,
i’d give my life for yours.
i’d walk those streets with you.
calling all certainties forth to question: think, miss, love.
the heart’s sudden inability to unravel memory from lie.
we had a song.
the way a jaw works over words that won’t form
the way the chest hitches as the devastation soaks in
the gasping, flailing loss underlying disbelief.
of course you’ll see me again.
of course you’ll see me before i go.
of course i still love you.
of course.
of course i miss you.
think about you.
dream of you.
of course you’ll see me again.
of course
i’ve never seen any of them again.
of course.
because i would come to you
over the water
through hills and memory
i would come to you,
i promise.
through the fragile web of the distances between us
accelerating into turns
never looking back,
i would come to you.
i would run.
i would promise.
if you asked me.
i’d run alongside your code forever
girding for wars of desire without end.
was never known to command respect from his peers was known to steal his fourteen minutes in fragments was known to sometimes allow ashes to burn on his forearms and face while waiting patiently for them to gutter out because at least it was something nearing proof that he was there at all
jog shuttle to pause, play: rupture, rend, rive, split, cleave:
edited a past away.
what you thought would disappear lies and waits.
it wasn’t love but it was something as painful.
OF SPLENDOR, OF MISERY
“If we’re going to do this,” Jean Reynald paused to snuff out the unfiltered cigarette between his fingertips and the ashtray glass, “I want my ship back.”
“That’s.. impractical.” Cellophane wrapper crumpled in Paul’s hand. Next, foil. These late-time strategery sessions were bronzed with a nicotine aftertaste. “We’ve looked for—”