your words fall like the top scoop of an ice-cream cone on an august afternoon.
i have not yet decided if it is the wasted fifty cents or the dissatisfying smudge on the faceless beige sidewalk that pisses me off most.
however, you tell me this disturbing news over coffee, 2 cream 2 sweetener, almost as sweet as your lips and just the same tempurature.
if only i had known, if only i could've remembered the last time we kissed
for it was a goodbye kiss.
damn you had me fooled.
i thought i knew you.
but only you knew me.
only someone wise as you could trip me up like this.
once, long ago
i thought you were a 'see girl, fuck girl.'
really, you were a 'see girl, fuck girl, attach soul to girl, grow into girl and be torn heart-rendingly from girl.'
i can not shake this shocking singe-mark on my left breast, where my heart exited in an attempt to follow your retreating footsteps.
loneliness, like a weed, grows back in your place.
only a moment had i found with you
only a moment where the world was not a lonely place.
like dandelion seeds, i fear my whimsy sowed the lonely seeds again
even as i was weeding them out.
did i do this?
no.
we did this.
we had equal part in this implosion.
she was right.
she can do her dance.
for i cannot love with half my heart
i cannot stand to be loved back that way.
and the child in me she cannot allow
needs to be herself.
"seee, the thing is, you kept walking through my head while i was writing that exam. no worries though - what i knew, i knew, and what i didn't, i didn't. but it was nice to have your company. and i thought about what you said while we were walking. and it was mindpoison. luckily, i managed to put that aside for the exam, but afterwards, i was walking home and every car on the road was yours, and every street corner was sooo promising, like you'd be right around the bend. and i didn't say anything back to you, because you take these words away from me. they just sort of puff out of existence like dandelions. so there's that. and i'm also struggling with jealousy. i can't get my head around this concept. rationality keeps slipping from my fingers. like that huge gross greasy guy that opened the door for us at country style. i wanted to punch him, hard. my fist was clenched and everything. but of course, that's ridiculous. it's ridiculous to be jealous of greasy boys on the street when you go home to a well-kempt school-teacher who happens to legally own you. of course, that's not really what it is, "owning", but that's my perverse and jaded view of marriage. but gah. i don't know what i'm saying. the thing is, i'm not asking for anything but your presence. because when you're present, it's allll good. as soon as you leave though, i don't know why, but it becomes this silly daydream or something. for example, i'm scared to send this for fear you'll write back to me saying "what the hell? i thought we were study buddies? who is this person you think i am? surely you have the wrong e-mail address. p.s. i don't think we can be friends anymore, cuz that's just too gross." seriously. but anyway, yes. the jealousy thing. and then you, youuuu, you get all jealous too, and i'm torn between how i feel, which is that it's the cutest hottest thing in the entire universe, and how i think, which is that it's not fair. not fair in that... to the both of us, really... because it's two pseudo-relationships. but not really, because it's SOOO not half of anything. it's a full thing. it's a whole living entity. the thing is, i don't WANT to be with anyone else. not right now. anyway, what i'm saying is, i don't know if i can just be fuck buddies with you. you're too...intrinsic. entangled. that doesn't mean things have to be weird or i'm asking for some weird...thing. no. no no no. i just want you to be happy. but it means ummm, that i really like you. you know, "strong feelings." i thought you might want to know what that meant for me, because i hate thinking that maybe you CAN'T see the inside of my head (though it seems you do - like how you knew i punched something, and that it was about deborah, before i even tried to come up with some less "lost-and-angry-child"esque reason for it) and sometimes all i can think is to hold you closer so that maybe you can read my thoughts better. and maybe you, you brilliant sculpture you, can sort through them better than i anyway.
so.
that's the ramble. i'm REEEEAAAALLY scared to send it, which is another reason i put it here, where there was some distance between the send button and it actually arriving in your inbox. and i'm scared you'll get scared the way i'm scared reading it and thinking of what you might think. don't. this is all...all just some good times. right? right?
and i'll end with some amy lowell, just because i love her words. she's an imagist, which means nothing in there is exactly what it is, but an image which acts as a sort of emotive metaphor for what it's actually about. but this particular one works in a literal sense as well. oh. and that last one, the "better than Mondrian" one, was by al purdy. anyway, here goes:
THE LETTER
little cramped words scrawling all over the paper
like draggled fly's legs
what can you tell of the flaring moon
through the oak leaves?
or of my uncertain window and the bare floor
spattered with moonlight?
their silly quirks and twists have nothing in them
of blossoming hawthorns,
and this paper is dull, crisp, smooth, virgin of loveliness
beneath my hand.
i am tired, beloved, of chafing my heart against
the want of you;
of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
and posting it.
and i scald alone, here, under the fire of the great moon."
we are beautiful.
glazed statuettes standing magnificently in the glory of our mountain sunset.
but i am not ready yet, to stand in that calmness.
and she is not ready yet.
and i stand by her decision.
friends forever, yes.
lovers never, maybe.
i know i'll love her until the last tree falls.
until the last government collapses.
until all of history crumbles.
i will love her.
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