a really good kiss
one night
over a bicycle
that left me
wanting more
all the way
home
I don't know what to do, so when I get a chance to, I sleep.
E says isn't this and its ongoing presence
a characteristic of depression? depression, as though a huge finger
is pushing me down deep into the earth from above,
is stopping the come-up.
(And when it takes its finger away
perhaps I will zing towards the heavens with equal force
unleashed unbounded high
before my eventual crash to reality).
Papa calls me. I panic, but I pick up.
(So painful these echoes of a past reality. Grief begets grief, recalls grief.
Male archetypes in my life that I do and do not know how to speak to.
That I did and did not know how to speak to.
Now E joins their ranks).
He tells me that things have been okay.
He has been quite busy with work, but really has been wanting to get out
into the day (as he has been accidentally doing these past months he places
his hand over the speaker and I cannot hear him, and I must chide him, his child,
and this lightness buoys against the secret darknesses of our conservation).
But it's nice, he says, to have a break from bad weather.
And I laugh, a sudden sharp hurt hopeful laugh, I could not have made two years ago,
maybe even, two weeks ago. And I say, as though it is explanation (it is not)
that sounds nice. he pauses,
are you needing a break from bad weather?
and I do not even have to say, yes, yes,
desperately.
and the way in which they become so unable to communicate
when we most need them to communicate.
we overcomplicate, type, retype, but it is futile–
how do we say the thing we do not know how to say?
I love you I do not want to talk to you anymore
I hate you and I want you to be in my life forever
I am so afraid to change though I am already changing
how can meaning in all its contradictions and impossibilities
be crammed into words that are meant to say one thing?
as though a comma could change everything
(eat, grandma. eat grandma). it does and it doesn't.
we are not able to control how others perceive us.
we are not able to control the future.
I was doing my best, I was always doing my best.
and I can die, knowing that.
sit on the sidewalk curb
eating oranges and drinking yogurt
and talking about what the versions of us
two years ago would have done had they known
what they were about to embark on.
yannic smokes a cigarette. then after marie asks if
we are not going back to class, and it becomes apparent in fact
that none of us will, he smokes another. marie says certainly
the biggest thing she has gotten from this is language skills,
are language skills soft or hard? none of us know.
maybe hard I say. yannic says her German is very good so sweetly,
his blue eyes twinkling. the madrid sun has tempered and in this shade
everything is orange like the skins marie piles into her empty yogurt cup.
the moment is perfect. recharges me like a battery.
makes me remember what it is that I want to live for:
tiny moments like this, the small teaspoon on my lips,
yannic's hand cupping the butt as he lights it up again and the smell
wafts over me in the wind, and marie places her spoon directly on the concrete
without a second thought. it is a spring moment tinged with summer,
anything is possible and the smallest things are dangerously sweet
something one would give their life for over and over again
never getting anywhere, but never needing to.
i.
I don't know anything
this is the only thing I know
the only thing that is quite clear to me.
ii.
I am sick of perfection.
Let me be reckless. Let me be foolish.
Let me be irresponsible.
I spend most of my time crying,
anyway.
iii.
Things I wish for:
to wake up and feel rested
to wake up not anxious not worrying if I should go back to sleep
the intimacy of a watch on the bedside table without the pain
comfort
to finish my thesis
to not be so tired
to know what to do
vi.
life perhaps
is a constant undoing
of past illusions.
(and what is built up
in their place?)
oh French boy
you are so beautiful
I truly thought I might die
"He is so cute I could literally die"
I type in my notes app
(and for all intents and purposes,
for all intensive purposes: I
mean it. I do not exaggerate).
Thrown to me, a pure product of
happenstance, and I so in love with you
a month ago on the metro, eyes roving
your sweatshirt and your knit cap,
drinking you in, you were so beautiful to me even then
served up to me again today by so many overlapping moments of chance
and then you order the same sandwich as me
and I can not believe my luck
an opening, to say something, anything
it's good no? but I shy away, I always shy away
(oh god you are so beautiful, too beautiful, and nervous
when you sense me in my noticing, I can tell)
but you see me register that you have repeated my order
and you smile and inside, everything I have ever known
sets on fire.
Perhaps that is enough.
The little girl does not want to sit
She holds her father’s hand
Her own clasped around the handle of her pink umbrella
She makes faces, pretty, ugly
To others, to herself
He is telling her things
Speaking to her as though she is an adult
(Emory says he likes this,
You say you love it,
Reflecting later on the escalator
At your station, going up)
And he is cautioning her about the day
She ran down the block and fell
You still have a bruise he says
Touches it on her temple
You can’t see it so clearly
But sometimes
Did I cry a lot she asks
He says I can’t remember
You did cry though
And she nods
Trusting him
To tell her the truth
Too young to remember everything
She wants to get off a stop early
But he says the next one is closer
So we’ll wait okay?
She says nothing
Come come he says
We will go wait by the door
She follows slow and silent
I see them pass the window
The top of her curls as
They amble down the platform
She drags her umbrella
As they pass the door
Scaled to her size
Hitting her chest probably
Where Emory’s large one
Hits his
I hold tightly in my fist
To their existence
Her curls tight and bouncing
They are a duo
And I remember my own palm
In that of my fathers
Our skin tones reversed
And I long for a child
To hug
To be friends with
And talk together
Know that we are duo
With which to see
And share
And discuss
The world