Scars

How could I have forgotten about the razor?

Slicing with its silky sharp and silver blade across inaccuracies and the needless complexity of life

Without contempt . . . or regret

Banishing the needless intensity that we place upon relationships to make us feel . . . how?

I should have known . . . should have seen . . .

Oh, my dearest ghost. . . . What was it you said so long ago?

“All things being equal—”

In the back of my mind I will always know that nothing was separate

“—it is the simplest explanation that—”

I understood your deceit from the beginning

“—is generally the correct one”

My own deceit

When I laid myself open to you . . . Hopes, dreams, and fears

That all you cared about was how far my legs would open

And lord, the nature of scars

Of how they can provoke so many different feelings

Sometimes the wistfulness of long-ago encounters, a sly smile

But sometimes hot-red self-loathing or

Deep-purple regret and pain

I know all of my scars by name

I know the songs that they each sing by heart

Those that bear your name are still fresh and burn with each new attention

They sing with a clear, piercing beauty that is too bright to look at

God, how wonderful it would have been that all I bore from you were the physical scars . . . so much quicker and simpler . . . so much easier to cut away

But . . .

Maybe they will help me remember

And . . .

Ghostly faint fingernails scrabbling at the stone

. . . will help me to pull myself up from the cliff when the time is right again

In the Late Autumn . . .

My mind is a mass of scribbles and crumpled paper, and I hear the soundtrack when I close my eyes
scratchings and muffled curses that are comforting in their familiarity

In the early hours of the morning, I find myself listening to a voice 1000 miles away as I sink into my bed and under the covers as far as I can go

There is a poignant desire to hear this voice rumbling through his chest as he holds me and babbles on and on

Funny that this soothes me, clears the lines on my face
I am afraid though,
that bodies will do what they do and will carry me beyond what my mind and heart are ready for

mostly I would like to lie in my pile of crumpled paper and bury myself like a pile of autumn leaves

To forget, forget, forget
Maybe to start new like the trees that seem to die

Flattery

The barista has stolen
my glasses,
and my haircut,
and my youth.

She took
my order and
my heart.

I picked up
my peppermint tea
(to go), and sat
down.

She swept
around me;
sat right
next to me.

Wearing my shoes
she asked, “What
are you reading?”

One Night in Orlando

Smoky and sweaty in I-Bar, I danced to each painful song
Scanning the crowd, dancers convulsed to various beats that must have been emanating from somewhere in the recesses of their drunken minds
You were hard to miss
Dancing with girl after girl, folding yourself into their style . . . expanding it each time
You were . . . too young . . . too popular . . . too something . . . always too much or not enough
Still we were face to face on the first beat of “Take on Me” and there was no one else in the room
We moved in response to each other’s bodies before we ever touched
“Where have you been?”
“In the wrong places I suppose.”
Smiling without meaning to and moving as if by instinct
The world folded in and collapsed . . . rebuilt itself for us to enjoy
No age or alcohol or overattentive friends . . . for a few moments
There were exchanges of names in between ecstatic beats
There were promises to see each other next time and “save the best dances”
But in reality, there was only a beautiful collection of moments
Grabbed frantically and held like butterflies
A space that we had created independent of anyone else
A brilliant syncopation of two minds and two bodies
A world we had built that waits for us to return

Reptile Logic

Somewhere in between Nevada and New Mexico, long liquid highways call out like an urgent lover
Flat gray ground, invading my senses and clothes
Bare skin on a cooling hood while strains of music fill my ears
Sticky, citrusy juice tumbling down my chin and settling in my stomach
Something has changed, my rushing mind has slowed with the heat
My heart seems to have stabilized
A small fence lizard scrambles up the hood of the car and searches my face boldly. . . . ”Do you see it?”
All around me, the land is breathing and I am breathing too
God, at last I am happy again
Driving, driving, driving that is all I ask for

Unsafe Love

Turning to you from the passenger seat in your car
I loved your profile and felt like the luckiest girl in the world
“Beyond reason” is how I described my love
“Beyond logic”

A Crush

I used to wonder if you even knew who I was, a shadow amidst the flock. Ragtags, some from homes worth running from, others starved to feel part of a group. We became a group, not by choice as much as by economic ties. Lunchtime forces aligned to achieve midafternoon bliss, kids with lunch money to spend. That is where I always was, amidst the haze, christening each day, foolishly wishing in reality to just disappear. Perhaps I was simply scared and stuck in a million scenarios of this and that, all of them leading to me looking like a fool. Confidence trails behind the high-strung mind that carefully weighs the context of every situation. Lunchtime was the moment waited for in the day. I would follow conversations to find that right spot where you would walk by, sometimes losing my place in the moment’s folly of a discussion. I think I could have kept it up for hours just to see you again. Every day a schedule unconsciously designed to walk past your place where you hung out with your friends. I would pretend to talk to whomever as we went to the car so I could catch glimpses of you. I was so afraid of acting like a clumsy fool, repeating silly syllogisms in my mind like, “How could someone like me ever be good enough for you?” What scared me the most was I could have stared for hours and tried so desperately not to look as I followed my friends outside to a gigantic van and a house down the road to park and chill.

“You wanna hit this, man.” I turned my head and by the look on his face, my friend had figured out that I was there but my mind was somewhere else. “Fuck it, dude,” he said smiling, knowing full well what I was thinking. So I smiled and grabbed the last of the clip as “maybe tomorrow” echoed in my mind.

But I Crossed the Bagaduce

That February, before I left for good though I had not stayed for long, I decided I had to see you one last time if it killed me. I drove to your farmhouse in the waning, winter daylight, not knowing if I would make it over the weathered, ice-paved roads on bald tires on a Civic overladen with shit. But you were there, and you were expecting me and I was expecting you, and so I didn’t care if I never made it on my way to you or if I never made it away from your house. But I crossed the Bagaduce. And wee-hours WERU played Mazzy Star’s “Wild Horses” out over the dark ice while you kept saying, “If you stay, I’ll…” I still smile at all the ways you filled that in to fill me up to fill you up and make me stay. And I left to keep my word and for you to keep yours and then I knew it was possible to be in the world–to actually function in the world as a living thing–when the heart is in shock and silent and the momentum of a promise propels life forward instead.

Closed Dance Card

In love with the music . . . collections of muscle, skin, and bones swirl and dip
sexier than sex
My breath was in my throat until you whispered in my ear a question
“What do you say we push some boundaries?”
“God, what took you so long?” tumbling out of my mouth from a different time
And we floated away on laughter and the long sensuous beats
Our minds clouded with the same smoky haze like an opiate, and we thought as one for a few blissful hours
Moved as one ethereal being
When people watch us move together it makes them long for something old and primal
Could it get any better? Until the next dance, my friend. . . .

Love

She looks at him with eyes aglow and says, “Within your eyes I see a sunrise.”
He smiles and shyly replies, “Only when looking at you.”