Overwhelmingly, I feel backed into a corner of a cell as the bars of the world solidify around me. The darker is getting darker, but the light has to get lighter. I just hope the light wins over my heart.
Because I yearn to be good, to be Faithful, to Love.
Godspeed.
I read the Gentleman’s Guide;
It didn’t tell me how to deal with this.
So I’m going to write my own:
Go dig a hole,
Crawl inside,
Live on a diet of worms and roots,
And avoid women.
The guide ends with a dichotomy:
Loneliness and happiness;
Heart in-tact and penis un-erect.
I digress.
Wisdom.
The truth is I don’t want you to read any of this.
Not because you’re stupid, or because I’m hiding from you.
Not because you don’t fulfill all of my needs.
The truth is I’m an animal, falling asleep next to you; in all of your beauty, you’re everything I could ever dream of having. The problem is that I don’t dream, and sometimes I get too caught up in the sad reality we’ve all been dealt. It forces me to let it all go and live more carefree than careful.
But I’m realizing more and more just how careful I have to be with you, because I couldn’t bare to lose you.
Shadows spread across my forearm, a branch from the steering column colliding with my body. I drive, as you’re silently brooding in the passenger seat. Foreign to the interior, it’s polysynthetic material nestling you in it’s cold arms. A drizzle of rain turns into a downpour, and we’ve reached a point of no return. I try hard not to remember nights that give birth to poetry, but like a child, the words cry out in terrible conspiracy: some things alter life irreversibly, yet others redefine love at its core. The rain retreats and we’re left with the debris, the engine idling, and above all, a subtle sadness unaffected by lesson or remorse.
He said to tell stories, not complex metaphor verse. So I’ll talk about that Halloween night when we began by handing out candy to children who didn’t know what animals we were, and ended with me on top of you. Your sister saw us and laughed, and we laughed, and it was alright. Because we were going to be in love some day, right?
I’m going to tell stories, not symbolic sermons. That’s what speaks to people. Like that time in a coffee house bathroom. I bent you over the sink and put my caffeination to the best use I knew how. When we were done, we retreated back to the oversized leather couch and sipped on our drinks until the straws only sucked in air. With nothing left, we made small talk, held hands, and walked back out into the real world.
Before long, it was cold. But in all honesty, it had never been warm. From that first night on a beaten path I knew well, to that night in your backyard; the temperature was well below freezing, and we made love in a lawn chair as if frostbite wasn’t a threat. These moments lived on in blocks of ice, still encased as permanent memories.
Every time I see you, it floods back. I’ll never love you, but sometimes I love to reminisce.
Wind at my back, I let the city behind me take leaps in front. Before long, it is everywhere, and I am just a citizen meandering through the lights, the footsteps, the music. I am timeless, invincible; I am somewhere I’m meant to be, when I’m meant to be there. You are somewhere else, leaving your own footsteps in similar sand. I’d give anything to be holding your hand, catching your breath, sharing your shadow.
We’re backdrops to entwining stories, building up before colliding in rare beauty.
I’m still learning to embrace it, yearning to understand it, no matter how much I pretend I know. Because I’ve never been here before, so wonderfully malleable to relentless love; I’ve never known someone like you - you - before, and I’ve never fallen asleep next to someone like you - you - a night before I did. With unknown territory, holding a torch to the tall buildings, crisp air, and waves of untraveled highways littered with lost travelers, I know I will never take this unexpected gift for granted. I’ll never be a lost traveler again, wiping my lips with an empty heart, leaving dim rooms where the confusion lit doorways in tired warning; in broad daylight, I love.
I love you.
We ran through the dark, searching the ground for my keys. Frantic, not because I had lost the keys, but because your parents were up the hill, unaware of our presence below.
I could hear Lake Erie collapsing in on itself, parallel to us, waves rolling towards us but missing our feet by an entire beach. A beach I was coming to know well.
A beach that ate my keys.
And I swear I loved you, the way men love when they’ve given everything just to get a few drops of love back. You dripped like an IV into my heart, as monitors beeped and the blinds hid sunlight. But through faded lines, I knew a world existed where I was not, that love was out there in abundance, and I merely held a jar of trapped emotion.
The atoms had unraveled and moved, to the point where I knew not love any longer. But I knew the beach, and I knew the brush, and I knew I couldn’t leave until metal sparkled in the moonlight. You, ironically, saved our asses that night. You, contrarily, tore me into little pieces mere months after the fact, taught me the hard way that love is usually not what you make it.
We didn’t make it.
A fly on the wall finds himself trapped in discreetness. I follow a line back to your face, your unblinking eyes, and see right through your defenses: you love me, unlike love I’ve ever felt, and you mean it when you kiss me. So you kiss me at the top of the Ferris wheel, above so much and below less, because you know I’m scared. Up here, there’s nothing holding me up but you. Up here, it doesn’t matter how many pretty words I use, how many fireworks go off behind us; the only thing that matters is that you’re with me, touching, mine.
The bugs cast shadows on sizzling light bulbs, trying not to interrupt the mood. And we go around, dancing with perfection.
Whispers from the airport report.
Flies vanish in thing air, but the buzzing continues.
In flashes, I realize pictures will document the poses and forsake the reality that we can’t breathe in these clothes.
I can’t sing along to these tunes.
I no longer know where home is.
I just know that I need you, that I’m lost somewhere in desperation, and the wells are drying up.
I know I’m supposed to call you.
Kind of like how, if you ever walk away, I’m supposed to follow.
But if I ever walk away, I mean it. It means don’t follow me. I’m done.
And not like how you just said, “I’m done.” Because that means you aren’t. It means it’s just starting. It means I’m going to spend a few hours tonight, trying to understand you, instead of writing my paper, or eating pizza bagels with my roommate. It means I fucked up by just asking what was wrong, getting a “nothing,” and finding myself confused: your actions always speak louder, and I can tell.
I know you. I wish you wouldn’t disappear every couple of days, let this woman take over your body, and then realize it all too late, after the fire and brimstone has rained down from the sky and our city has been reduced to ruin. I wish you would just say, “I felt alone last night.” Instead, it’s, “I’m fine.”
I’m not done yet, but I hate this. And I’m not fine yet, because I just don’t know what to do when you’re absent.
