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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.

gentle does it

i stumble
on the stepping stones of love;
instead of falling i
catch myself in time
to feel enough
to send me flying.

call me crazy
but i like it;
head spinning in your arms
i see his eyes
and drown in yours.

 gentle does it.

the world off your shirt

i won’t wait on you,
but not because i don’t want to:
maybe i would have done on any other day—

that’s not to say that i don’t hate
standing at the train station waving at a departing train.
it’s not me, you understand?
in me there’s always an impulse to chase it.
just water, baby, to chase it. 

just water, a silent drizzle of impending rain:
it’ll wash the world off your shirt—
and i will smell crisp cotton again.

82. once in a million words

to know fear is to have never tasted it, that bitter acrid taste of rotting apples mixed with strong perfume. there is no knowing, only inhalation and dizziness before the lights go on. then, fear subsides.
the aftertaste remains. cologne is rotting. rotting all the same.

and swallowing the cider bile i stop. and start. i stop and start. and i remember that this was rhythm beaten out for me and Y. aeons ago, i would have told him this was our rhythm, that it was made for us. really, the rhythm is mine alone.
it is the heartbeat of a rabbit caught running in circles, breaking out of a different hole every time. only i have no space of time and who knows if i’m late?
there is no knowing here, only white roses being painted red. but i need no paint, truth always comes out in the end.

and this fear reigns over love. it transcends the borders of us and reproduces in our creations. why is that, will you tell me?
it must be us, the charcoal darkening the paper.
it must be orange juice spilt on a linen cloth. or coffee. coffee on those tiles.

still, it’s so nice to be able taste fear once in a million words, wouldn’t you say?

81. the yellow vibrancy of life

how vain i should be to reread my own posts, but sometimes, late at night or early in the morning, i find myself scrolling through the past on the computer, mouthing the words or simply caressing them with my eyes. because within me there is something i have not yet understood. an undercurrent of a river lost in my old, unpracticed tongue.
rio de la plata maybe. or river of the sun.

even the sun has sunspots, darker on the background of virginal white; and so i have the blind spots: i always find them when i try. no light is enough to banish the spot of darkess on my sleeve: the drop of blood refusing to wash off in hot water. it would wash off in the cold, i know, but it’ll never get the chance.
chances are far and in between, don’t you know?

and i find myself every time, unexpected, like red peonies on a rose bush in may.
находжу себе кожен раз в шматку чорного хліба.

but what is there to find, other than the poems i had learnt by heart in years three and five. and seven. wordsworth’s daffodils.
the yellow vibrancy of life.