i just really think i miss him, ok?

Listen, or don’t. There was this guy, i know, but not the same one i wrote about in that stupid song that flew away in the mourning doves before first light 2019. it was the person, the one at the cigarette dump disguised in a fortress of oregon brick & dumpster chique, this who let me take him to the guitar room to make music about an angel that turned out to be a chalk-eyed stone on a deadman’s doorstep. this was the man who went to the sea to defend the land and went under the knife to save the heart thrice or twice maybe. i didn’t know him because none of the stories ever got finished because of invaders or we thought we’d have more time later. i should have been wiser by that age, certainly he should have. wise for the cracked unlistening youth: there will not be more time later. there is never more time at all; if there is a later you’re lucky and possibly also dead. at the time i probably wasn’t in love with him but now i feel as though my ghost is falling in love with a shadow a shadow projected onto a backwards mirror & you know anytime i hear heavy metal i think of how he is so strong in so many ways yet can take these war-knowing hands, can use them to wrap around a kitten, fluffy as the tip of a dandelion tuft looking for homeroom, or even those arms strong as a crocodile moat that can wrap around a small person who feels too big for the world & make the world seem less too & make the person feel less small & yet smaller all at once. those arms when they were around me for a tiny space in time it felt safe, like i was. so that’s what the ghost in my shadow’s heart is mirror-tugging after. its looking for that man-boy-brother-son-solder-dandelion-holder who would have stayed, who would have written or called at least in the air, & for all i know you did or maybe even quit, for you me or for her who is really the one i want you to hold because you can, & right now, that’s what needs. but if there was a magical dream world where you didn’t forget & didn’t hold it against me that i got left away first & in that dream world i’d be waiting, the dream you could come find me & maybe again but this time i’d be the world to saften you instead and right.

Nicoteen Dream

I’m sorry that I wasn’t pretty enough

to make it that you could put

the cigarette

down;

make it worth it

to you.

I’m sorry that I apologize too much

but I can’t help being

sorry for being

when woman is what it is I am

currently imposed by the flower

the wheelbound man in front of the car hospital

never would give to me now

that I burn in shame-hell.

I’m sorry that you will never read the letters

in my messages, because if you did

if you listened the way you do when it’s sound instead of dances

of form on space

emptiness on pixellates

if/then you would hear-see

that really i could have been

but now that i’m not

pretty

i guess i’m not

but I always sort of thought

that didn’t matter to you

or at least not as much

since you were the sand of Normandy, rosequartz-gold alloy

since you were the thing in my lined paper breaking

the lines, graphite

hearts exploding & stories untold still

i want you to tell them now

please don’t say don’t say you never will

a distinct lack of being left behind

“But it’s okay now.” A smile, slight nervousness shining through like early sunrise the morning the Ark sailed out of the port. “I’m okay. Now. Really.”

“Promise?”

“As much as one can promise anything.”

My left jaw tightens, though you are smiling. “Cross your heart and hope to die?”

“Is that a trick question?”

I flaw forward with a sound that might be an emotionally-charged hiccup, a laugh, a sob or a sneer, maybe all at once. My head is in my hands to cover my eyes from looking at you and that sandy-beach smiling face. I thought I wanted more than anything to see you happy. Why is it that now it hurts to look?

“Aw, come on, Janessa,” I hear your voice flow out like chocolate from a warm shadow. You sit us both down on the alabaster bench amidst the purple roses. It’s the least comfy bench I have ever experienced, but somehow without even touching me you give me home, with your eyes, a drowning-in-gold space, a pillowed couch. Just by looking.

“What’s really the problem here?”

I uncurl my body a little to sit up straight and look you straight-on. Take a deep breath. What if — “I don’t –” What if you interrupt me? I look. You’re still patiently watching my lips, my eyes, no intention of moving words. Another deep breath, then I try again. “Reymond, I just don’t want to be one of those women from the folk ballads, the left-behind damsel whose lover-boy went away to seek his fortune or some shit like that and never returned. I mean, those damsels — don’t they usually end up cutting off all their hair or drowning in a river or selling their soul to a witch or something?”

The smile on your face opens like a morning. I don’t feel mocked, but rather like smiling in harmony. Maybe it is okay.

“Yeah, but you’re not one of those damsels. You know why?” You stop, really waiting for my answer.

“Umm… because they were from earth and wore a corset?”

“Well, that’s probably also true. But I was thinking you’re also different because of two important things.” You check to see that I’m listening, like a teacher. “For one, your ‘lover-boy’ isn’t going to just disappear like that. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Except the X-Quadrant..–” I start to mutter.

“And, more importantly,” — your eyebrows are raised, very teacherly, to emphasize this point — “You are not some ‘left-behind damsel.’ You’re a 3-dimensional person with your own volition, your own destiny, free will, a fiercely independent mind, and a distinct lack of being left behind.”

“Really? You’re taking me? But… I sort of don’t want to go anymore.”

“Same here. Can we go to Frozo’s?”

“I sure hope they have chopped walnuts this time.”

Not exactly riding off into the sunset, but it works for me. Just striding unnoticed down the sidewalk, grins hand in hand.

grocery store; isle of the apples

i know the ball is in your court but

here’s me nudging it with the extended seven-league ghost of my foot

levitating it without touching

i could drop it anywhere but i won’t.

so many things i wanted to ask

so many things i wanted to tell if only

if only i knew what they were really.

half the time when i’m in my right mind it becomes clear to me

i am a creep, a spider’s shadow behind your shoulders, i am behind bars,

it is on me. the other two-thirds of the time

lost somewhere in the half of my mind i left behind

in a safe nook between mussels at the ingrown toenail of the pier

the other one-quarter of the time

it becomes clear to me

i was paranoid about being a creep and you were the obvious open flower

and i was the stinging insect waiting to be invited in but

you see flowers don’t talk except to the eyes

and honeybees are colorblind. is that offensive?

moments flash past

between corpulent forms of watercolor-splashed

apples on their mountainous island

in the produce aisle of the grocery store —

moments: warm alley light,

anemones bursting from crooks in rocks

and shriveling back at the touch of a thought’s

finger, the slow outflow of the mind when one is old

that way, the way

you could have almost hugged my body with your words

but would you have dared to touch me,

or were you afraid of catching some disease? dis – easy

in planes, dizzy in the band room

between bass drums no one plays

i am afraid of some disease catching you

sometimes i think i’m already in the web struggling

sometimes i laugh at my romanticized images of a death that truly would smell odorous

sometimes i think i use too many dead metaphors

sometimes i think i’m out of the woods

sometimes i think too much

i wish so bad i could get lost. this letter, though,

will never be written, or else it will be lost in the mail.

can you imagine a time when paper reinforced oceans of distance

and left a resistance net to catch the little words we spill from keyboard fingers

too fast and then can’t take back? across the apples

there is another man eyeing me suspiciously.

his girlfriend looks like me if i was pretty and cut

out of a magazine and blonde. sometimes —

half the time, let’s say — it comes to me that i half-believe

that if we could walk down these gray sidewalks together and search for good apples together

they would seem less gray

that we could go shopping at this grocery store every day and fall into a

routine that, while infuriating when repeated with our parents,

becomes nestlike and wanted when repeated with our newfound liberty

or semblance of. and that you could possibly

love me, or that you already did,

and the ship has sailed, sold

the sharpest lightbulb in the drawer. and i want to tell you everything

so your ears can absolve me and i don’t want you to be poisoned

by my thoughts and i want to just hear your voice just hear your voice

saying anything really but it would be nice if it could include the word

wonderful and my name in the same sentence

could we trade the inhabitants of our skull? i think my voices

respect you, though they sometimes want to hurt me bad

and i don’t know who’s in your head but if they are even thinking of hurting you

my mind knows martial arts and is excellently strong.

a guy the other day asked me to climb into a tuba case

and said my voice is a mating call (long story) and a dream he had

where a random thing such as myself appeared

and i felt suddenly like a creep

because he said he wanted me to spend time with him

and i want you to want to be with me

and i just want to be wanted

and i know when i walk on the sawdust trail some things were definitely off

always off like our parents and such

but is there any such thing as love where nothing is off and everything is on?

even my head sometimes doesn’t seem to be on, or else it’s on

some countertop in a flustered restaurant kitchen rolling between turnips and earless onions, narrowly avoiding the steak knife and the overscheduled chefs

and sometimes i wonder if you feel this way but i hope you don’t

because hoping that you are doing better than i am

seems to be one of those rare things these days that sparks something

in my fictitious heart: something bright and close

to purpose, to wanting

to be here.

and i just wanted to know

how wrong i was, objectively,

to imagine such a thing as

holding still and dancing at the same time?

Books and Today

Are all books imperfect? And do you keep reading, once you notice the little twinges of inconsistency in the plot, the little rustlings of discontent in the logic department? Do you tell the book to shape up, or do you just quietly persevere like an old-fashioned marriage?

Today I got into the passenger seat of your car without a second thought. Once you had cleared the notepads, cords and candy wrappers. It didn’t even occur to me to worry about you potentially trying to kill us both until you went over a bump in the road a little too fast. You slowed down. I still was not worried that you intended to hold power over me like a quarry-load of rocks waiting to fall on my skull and nail me into the ground. Is it strange that I didn’t feel particularly unsafe even once, until the aftermath when I was already halfway up the stairs to my room? How many times have I watched a car with a steady-handed person at the steering wheel, parking gently in a legal space, and have I bitterly envied the passenger(s) for the complacent expressions on their faces, have I thought I would never again get into a car and trust the person driving so dearly with my volition and the warmth of wanting to live and on and on?

Are books getting more flawed as time advances? Has the Internet changed the standards for spelling and grammar? For dimensionality of characters? Are books like human children, always more shallow and thankless than the generation before them? Or are they like school children, nimble at the edge of a thorn, waiting to fledge into the chilled spring upon the command of a pen? Are books like worlds? Who can fix them?

Upon a rhetorical question you hope to God I don’t answer

Like all my problems,

this one is invalid,

signified especially by your interruptive assurance that

“I’m not trying to invalidate your problems or anything,” before

I have even said anything.

Because you have seen a country collapse,

you tell me the fact is that the collapse of my rib cage

is small – “I wish all the problems in the world were that small.”

Because you have been told you play viola well,

you reassure me that perhaps things will change in the future

and besides it doesn’t matter that the masterclass teachers don’t care

to hear me play, because I’ve stated that I don’t want to play, so

where is the conflict?

Because your family has seen starvation,

You teach me about starvation

and I know something about starvation

but I prudently

do not attempt to teach you about the collapse of my little isolationist

nation of one

and the physical starvation it incurred not because of

a grand-scale crisis but rather because everything

in that mind was extremely small

because I was privileged,

my problems were small and pink and rhinestoned,

but remember that the kitten that ripped a hole in a wrestler’s trachea

was also small, pink and rhinestoned

and stop accusing me of being small-minded

when your mind is the one that can’t seem to imagine

any nation, language, or sex drive other than your own

as if there were one continent on this planet

lonely and united.

Wherein all the “disrespectful” questions I refrained from asking burst out of my façade and graffiti themselves onto your edifice

Has it ever occurred to you that another person’s truth might be just as true as yours, or, put more bluntly, that your truth might be just as wrong as theirs?

If and when this occurred to you, did you turn up the dials on your ears to listen, or did you turn up the volume on the plastic heart on your sleeve to drown all other falsenesses out so only your artificial authenticity got heard?

And have you contemplated the possibility of a three-inch-high ice skater in a snow globe that is pushed from the bookshelf to the floor, how she might watch the microplastic flurry in stomach-turning sparkled whorls around her spinning four-by-four-inch cottage — and that it might be a giant thundersquall for her?

And have you imagined what happens when her plastic dome cracks on the edge of the nightstand, and the distilled water she breathes seeps away into the carpet, and her four-by-four-inch cottage breaks in half, and a piece of her forehead chips off — and that it is actually for her the end of the world?

And do you question the validity of her suffering because yours takes up so much more space (yours being, of course, the enormous suffering of the taxpaying master of the house who must unsheath the dustpan and broom and sweep away the remains and trek to the trash can to toss them who-knows-where [i.e. “away”] while daydreaming about all the people who don’t love you enough)?

And when you question the validity of the suffering of a porcelain figure in a snow globe, do you ever wonder if, from within her porcelain eyes, your own suffering appears inconsequential? And do you wonder if the big hands holding the snow globe around your own planet will ever slip and drop it into the throat-catch loss of perspective that is the black velvet universe?

And when you complain that the woman across the street does not fall in love with you — and when you turn around and say “I can’t finish my sentence, it’s too vulnerable” — do you ponder whether the guarding of your precious vulnerability might be related to her reluctance to find something worthy of tenderness in the trademarked silhouette of you that you allow her to see? And when you complain that you feel like a stranger among other city-walkers on this half of the coffee-crumpled continent, do you consider that all other city-walkers are strangers too?

Is it possible that one day you will unwind and retire the plastic heart on the trademarked sleeve, unbutton the edifice, and let the light juice out the real, meaty, gory, arterial-purple, gloop-encased, beautiful muscle behind your rib cage, and let the woman across the street and all the other city-walkers taste your everything-I-have-to-offer with their eyes and calculate whether they want to open their own rib cage to you? Can you jump first in the dark and trust that the other person will hold the line? Can you stop pretending to be infallible, so that the other person might have a chance of trusting you to hold the line as they rappel down into the dark, first? And will you follow? And if you cannot follow, today, because it is a bad mental-health day in your snow-globe… will you still like yourself? Or will you have to try on a new one tomorrow?

Without your permission

I will stay alive

I will spend money on myself

I will be priceless

I will love completely even if he doesn’t love back

I will floodshatter

& try again

I will drink the sun over a morning newspaper waiting to be written

And I will write some things in it that you will be not o.k. with

And I will open like a flower.

so don’t bother telling me

i cannot care about your suicidal daughter.

i care about your eighty-year-old carpenter father who sawed off his hand and then joked about it at the hospital

i care about your cat Huckleberry who died of diabetes

i care about the slug split open on the steaming sidewalk with guts spilling out under girls’ designer shoes

i care about the spiky-haired person at the bus stop with his head in his hands and his earphones plugged in so that he could not have heard me trying to ask him to tell me what was wrong even if i was able to ask it

i care about the blood-cloudy shark sinking into eons-heavy black, all salvation sliced off with his fins, the heart spliced by a glass-shard wall, the little brain spiralingspiraling, the down the colddark and the teeth of the former sisters and brothers and the end of the heart

i care about the paper airplanes broken by my cat’s predatory instincts

i care about Mark with the green sleeping bag whose name was probably not really Mark who asked me where i lived and said maybe I’ll meet you this evening but was probably never really going to meet me and who was selling marshmallows and was probably not well

i care about the word at the end of a paragraph that finds itself alone on a line of white space

for gods’ sake i care about everything

which is why i cannot care about your suicidal daughter.

if i did,

it would haunt me,

drive me up the wall

drive me to write a poem about

how bad

i care.

i’m sorry.

Stop —

when you see a flower

skydrift

towards your face

it paints your whole eyeball ticklish-

-ly and you fall

in love and as you start to hold it

you realize it’s falling

breaking off your fingertips falling

inextricably

falling

towards the center of dark-deep gravity

falling for the fallacy that is individuality

but it’s your flower

and you care tremendously

and you know exactly what’s vaguely down there —

monsters with mechanized mandibles, metal threads

of windpipes snapped —

but gravity is more alluring than your

possible

 

so there is nothing you can do

but watch it fall

and die a little bit inside

as it kills itself outside.

Please don’t rhyme “suicide”

with any side i can see which is

every side, though some sides

are fictitious. Being killed (even vicariously)

is a somewhat inconvenience, and

September is coming.