“It is beyond question that this would further complicate the situation, but I would also understand if you decided to go.”
— A therapist practicing impartiality
You are a pastime that I cannot let go,
and making mistakes is a dangerous hobby.
Remembering who I am is a hot-cheeked, sinking feeling.
Pins and needles, butterflies in the ventricles.
Blood flow returning to areas that had lost feeling,
that had been presumed dead.
Have you ever been thirsty and drank much water so fast that your stomach hurt?
Things that you need are not always comfortable.
Sometimes things that you need happen all at once.
Sometimes they do not feel like giddiness,
but like the dizzying disorientation of being up too high on a tall building.
I am crashing back to reality.
You revel in my fall.
If I am to make a mistake, let it not be the kind that allows me confuse his embrace for yours.
Give me the strength to avoid self-aggrandizing in the face of attention, and understated attraction.
I am not special, and that can be attested to.
Instead, allow me to cradle my love like they are holy, like the purity of their affection is the epitome of my humanity.
Because it is.
The purity of their love for me.
Has made me human.
And though it is also the weakness in this humanity that leads me to transgress.
I must not bite the hand that feeds me.
My first move was jimmying a piece from the bottom. It was all about strategy. You destabilize the foundation first, and every move after is a risky one.
From that point on, both of us wince and grimace at the difficulty of removing more blocks from the precarious structure. Like it’s a game we’re playing as equals — just trying to keep the whole thing from toppling over.
But my first move was determinate. We were working in the landscape I created.
And from that first move, there was no going back.
There’s something about the way water swishes around in the muddied glass
Centrifugal force
Never cleaning the perimeter
No friction
Only circular motion
Around and around
In the aisle, I looked up the color for apologies; for resignation
I cut the stems in the kitchen, picking pieces off our floor before you saw them land
I had always been so good at that
I wonder where my talent for neutrality is hiding
I have not seen her lately
I’ve only noticed the aging face of someone immersed in shattered pretense
Scarred by broken glass
Water cannot swirl if soapy fingertips drop the vase
And you caught me red handed
The rings feel so hollow
Just like forever seems hollow
As if the cost of my inner thighs is beer
And mixed drinks after, to make the night go wrong
I do not feel traces of him on my body
Seedlings in the spring air cling to me more then he ever will
And you are my whole self
You are embedded in every follicle
You are the precipitate of heart beat
I feel you in my breath
You are my forever
The forever that I pray outweighs my tomorrow
I will keep waiting for you
At the back door
At the front door
At the landing of the stairs
Are you enamored by the way light refracts off the surface of my skin
Is that distracting to you
You are preoccupied by the contents of your own imagination
There is no reality in us
And I wish there were less
I think if I were further from you, the words would come to me
I would write our friendship like a eulogy
If I get a dick pic I’m leaving the state
Is my agency stifled by desire
Because my heart is only racing from anxiety
I want to medicate you away
I am losing myself in the reflection of your sunglasses
If you take in a full enough mouth of smoke, you may convince yourself it’s something worth swallowing.
That singed tongue and throat are life-sustaining.
Is that not what he told you?
When he blew it into your mouth?
You said you weren’t hungry anymore.
You said you were content to die wearing only his perceptions of you, fitted to your cold body like a corset.
(Cinched & pulled)
You said of all of the ways to commit suicide, this was by far the prettiest.
The tension evaporates
or collects in droplets,
beading on the leather of my boots
or muddying the ground beneath my feet.
Sometimes openness
does not feel like freedom,
and the anticipation framing your face
reads like disappointment.
I will collect myself.
Try not to swat or kill anything
before it lands.
Even if that thing scares me.
I will write belonging as a fleeting thought,
before the page moistens, limpens, and corrodes.
I think I am meant for an existence,
and am driven to unearth rather than tread above it.
But my wrist aches.
I will splint it until tomorrow.
