You know I had actually forgot your number
until the alcohol set in, until my hands
did it by muscle memory, and there I am
embarrassing myself again.
This stupid door has closed too many times
when I should have asked you to stay,
not so much a piece of the puzzle as a painting
of a what heaven looks like from your eyes,
I’m beginning to regret ever being happy
because after you’ve stolen the universe
what else is there?
Oxygen?
Please. I dream more far-fetched escape routes
to your smile in my waking
than there are chemical bonds keeping us together,
which, consequently, happens
to be zero.
If I ran from here to
both coasts and back,
I wouldn’t even tell you.
You are a secret best kept from me,
or else I’ll never speak the truth to anybody else again.
I grew up Catholic but if you’d like you can give me my first religious experience.
The chimney has what’s leftover of us holding hands
embossed on the rim in smoke
and I can’t help wishing I knew how to inhale
ash without choking on it the way
I choked on my syllables
last night. We never did see eye
to chin, more hand to rib,
more push and give,
more “keep me safe”
and less “keep me sane”,
when you told me you loved
the mountains I thought it was a metaphor
describing a circle around our neighborhood,
but you really meant you loved being far.
I wonder if you can hear the wind from the top of your roof
the way I can dream your laugh from the depths of my bed.
We slept on floors
and empty blankets;
the cold windowed its way
between our fingers and under the door.
Your sepulchral junction
of shoulder to neck. Was the rest
of it a lie, then?
The sigh of your knife-fingers down
my sides, did you expect me to bleed
for you? These lungs do not
puncture so easy, I told you already-
my losing drum of consciousness
and your tomahawk regret
have decided where I’ll stay tonight.
Don’t take your shirt off yet;
I’m a piece of the picture that you never wanted there
I’m a piece of the picture, take your scissors to my head.
I’m a piece of the picture that you’ll never see again,
good thing it’s just a negative.
We slept on rooftops
and drank from stashes
in my chimney; you are
the only star I can touch
without disintegrating.
The cathedral of your eyelash
on my cheek as you flutter
in your sleep. I told you
I’d keep you safe, but there you are
on the ground again
and it doesn’t look like you,
no it doesn’t look like you are getting up,
it doesn’t look like you will ever learn.
Don’t believe my hands
they’re bloody liars.
Your body is a broken church.
All I’m good for is demolition.
We thought that we were artists with broken brains.
We are just dying leaves.
We thought we were pieces of the grand design.
We are just oil stains on God’s driveway.
We are not necessary.
We are just there.
I am sorry about the spring and the summer
and the way they can steal you down
and I promise in a few months I will
pick you up off of the ground
and tell you the questions that I have,
tell you the answers that I haven’t got
I’ll sing you the songs I didn’t write
and tell you I’m everything that I’m not
Let’s find an excuse to disrobe each other
and act like that’s enough
and if we’re quiet maybe your brother
won’t ever guess about us
I made these pancakes if you want them
and you can steal all of my clothes
just be here in the morning and let me kiss your nose
There will be no dancing here
after you fly away
there will be no dancing here
I’ve got nothing more to say
Pick up the your clothes
and I will get mine too
like a post-acopolyptic scene after I make love to you
I’ll do my laundry before you get here
because I love it when you wear my shirts,
I never wash them after you come over
because I love the way your scent makes me hurt
Come on baby, let’s go again
and forget the flight
I swear to God if we can make it last
it’ll be alright
I made these pancakes if you want them
and you can steal all of my clothes
just be here in the morning and let me kiss your nose
There will be no dancing here
after you fly away
there will be no dancing here
I’ve got nothing more to say
Forget want– your body is necessary.
I found you waiting
for trains and I wish I knew
how to stand still
Whenever I hear that song my fingers shake
and my neck burns in the place where
you’re the only one
who can kiss it like that.
It’s a waltz to fall
in love to but we never did that
because you were already there
and we just got higher
and I don’t go to church
but I’ve started praying about you
to whoever will listen:
somebody’s bed
the mattress we slept on
the stained light through dirty windows
people who look at me more than once
the dogs
the canal bank
my theory professor
the small of somebody’s back
I ask them all where I can find you
but all I get is
“no space here”
without you is a black hole and I suffocate
with a regularity
of single-minded blown away dreams
The story we’ll tell says we didn’t do it
but here I am hiding on your bathroom floor
They said that I was just another player
but I can’t tell who’s winning am I keeping score?
She doesn’t know, it’s our little secret
but you can see the stories written on my neck,
get your make-up out they’ll never find out
best friends don’t leave scratch marks on each other’s backs
On your phone, your new boyfriend sounds like he’s
six foot two and in love with you
but here we are
the way we are
your hips are on mine but your eyes are so far
And when you’re drunk and you need saving
I’ll be the one you call and I will not come
because we both know if they find out anything
we will both lose everything and then some
Instead I’ll call your new boyfriend
and tell him with a whisper that you’re alone
I will stay up for hours
and dream about what if I had taken you home
On your phone, your new boyfriend sounds like he’s
five foot four and he adores you
but here we are
the way we are
your hips are on mine but your eyes are so far
I’m pretty sure, you love me more
but then again I know how your body lies
and all I have are all these letters
in six different notebooks I’m gonna light them on fire
When you leave, I won’t blame you
it’s not like we have a lot to live for
after all, I’m just another player
and you were just a game, are you keeping score?
There are constellations on your skin that I want to paint over the sky.
When I broke my nose and we kept drinking because sometimes the only way off of the concrete is into a bottle.
When you asked me if I liked smoking and I told you it felt better to at least taste death on your tongue instead of finding it four years too late in the pictures of somebody you wish you could forget.
When I said “nice” I meant “it’d look better on the ground” but beggars can’t be choosers or I’d be on the ground beside it.
When they ask if you believe in God and you tell them there’s no room for faith when you lost your knuckles to the staircase over somebody who doesn’t remember your name.
When you tell me I look nice and my ankles break.
When the television becomes the only reality you can stand.
When the paper falls out of your hands and you forget why you loved the wind so much.
When I go away.
When I keep away.
When I write your name in my sleep.
When the trump card of the universe is spelled in the cuts on my thighs.
When the sounds of breathing are no longer necessary.
When you become the things you long to forget.
The room was empty and the bed was a big as your eyes across the country. I took six steps across carpet and tried to drown myself in white dream linen, imagining it to be what your fingers would feel like on my back. It was too heavy. Nothing I can touch will ever be your breath, nothing I can kiss will ever be your sigh. I woke up to steam from the roof vents fogging the window and my hands shaking like the California Coast; there is somewhere you need to be. Your thighs are the gyres that keep the West windy and I pray to be blown away.
I will not follow you anywhere but I’ll kiss every footprint.
I necked you a song last night;
it’s written in your sighs as they faded into the walls
and the floor holds our debates.
An atlas of our past is criss-crossed with safety-pins
and tacks in the shapes of cursive
letters that spell “r e m e m b e r”
This is on your cheek every time you smile
and I am the only one who sees it.
I am the only one who can see
the lies you put on with your mascara every morning.
But I will put mine on with my sweatshirt and we’ll keep tying knots in each other’s tongues until we have nothing left to say.
I want to roll you off my tongue
like your hips and your
knees in grass and the blood
in your alcohol and the teeth
of your bite
(you’re drunk or drinking and it makes me want to carry you up a stairwell and tell you all about the rain shadows I live in)
I want to pronounce your body
repeatedly
with imperfect diction
until my mouth has you
memorized the way
my dreams already do
