you are.

you listen
to the scribble of my pen on paper:
ardent, desperate, hot:
bird caged in barbed wire and wool,
fed ground coffee and coca leaves.

you listen
of my other loves:
none as big
none as beautiful, but just as real

and flitter
between me and sadness,
so that i don’t have to do it myself:
a mediator, a true constant.

you are the paper i write on,
carving words into the thick muscle of heart:
water is thinner than blood.

you are the dream I must have had
before you held me in the night.

you are. you are. you are.

90. we lay on the deck and count the stars

morning
8:30 a.m.

he did not recieve the text. good. so we chat. friends, not lovers, that we are: i question him of things and he shares his good news with me. at midnight. not that i didn’t ask him to, but he doesn’t bother informing you. funny?

relieved, i don’t think of the saved blushes and the heat does not rise to my cheeks: it doesn’t need to. 
a sigh escapes like a fly through the open window, its wings no longer beating against the cold clear pane of glass.  
phone on, i wait to hear a beep. from you or him, it hardly seems to matter.

i sleep lightly as of late, or as of early. since our trio of sleepover nights, it’s been better, but sometimes, i will wake up in the night and think you are with me, curled up on the floor.
no longer an insomniac, i don’t know how to classify myself. i want a tidy name to sum it all up. there isn’t one.

i’m on the edge right now and it’s nothing to do with the pair of you. my future lies within these very moments, encapsulated in the smell of old books and pheromones surging.
i call the number. it is busy. so i call again.
right now, all i care about is that the phone is picked up and they listen to me, if even for a while.

evening
9:30 p.m.

i heard a no. loud and clear, like a dead weight going into cold blue-black water.
deep, guttural sounds of a storm brewing. but the storm is already over. we lay on the deck and count the stars.

acetone

it balances out. it always does.
some call it karma. we call it god.
no ifs. no buts. no forevers.
just stop and listen to our song.
yes, any song.
can you hear my voice resonate?
you should know i wouldn’t run to hate
if love’s all i’ve ever known
and this life i’ve sewn
is mine to splash acetone on.
no one will stop me.
no one knows how.

—————————————–

it was such a momentous day today. for the first time ever i touched the heights those older and wiser often talk about. seventh heaven, where flesh trembles, leaving eyes in a haze.
but something had to ruin it all. and maybe you can fight against the darkness, but in any case, you didn’t. they win. 
no matter: i don’t need them.
just the memory of today is enough.

and the irony isn’t lost on me.
6 months since my goodbye to X.
well done to me.

49. and to think i used to call him mine

if he ever tried to retrace his steps, Y would still be here. there’s only so many lives a man can lead. whilst i lived out my three, not quite a cat but near enough the slinky nine, he could barely grasp onto one.

so here we are again. and he won’t admit that he was wrong to have jilted me at my elusive altar and though i’m not bitter, i still think it should have been me to have waved the first goodbye. i was never the taker for seconds.
now we speak for barely more than seconds.

and we had a conversation today. somehow i manipulated minutes out of him when he claimed to have none. and he wants me to call on a weekend. and he listened to my poetry of loving women and war poets. it’s been a while. but i’ll let him live his life. that one life he holds onto like a raft in a burly sea.
those sort of lives were never meant for me: i like mine long and luscious, like sweltering summer days.

and when i read him my lines, he stopped talking altogether, pondering, wondering, what it was that i meant, knowing it concerned him but not knowing how.

and to think i used to call him mine.

35. we parted with a soft beep and a stone upon our chests

have you noticed we always have this thing of bringing up the pain before we part, as if we need that food for thought in seperation?
and late at night, when lights are off, we lay there in deep silence engulfed by other person’s hurt, forgetting ours so well. and every shadow on the wall from passing cars or people we see from our beds is just another memory of me and you and this.

last night i laid there recieving the night like hapless counterpart, ill all day, i was happy to recline back in my bed, my throat like partched white paper, both inside and out. and your voice was like my savior, a ray of sunlight in the realm of the shadows, as i listened to your every syllable over the sleek grey phone, loving and unloving every word.

but one phrase or maybe more snapped a tight elastic around my heart, that forbidden line where the predator in me sleeps, and the rush of blood to the head roused me. containing the beast within me as best as i could, i asked you not to talk about it again. but you did and i snapped outright, a lion roar echoing in the enclosure of my room.
and then i told you the bitter truths.
and then i had to go.

and at midnight, we parted with a soft beep and a stone upon our chests.
in my realm, nightmares followed.
in yours, a silent thought of me.