I'll have to play with this one more later. Or next month. Either way.
April 4th. 3/30
Love
She told me, It's as if you saw someone across a chasm and fell toward him. And in the middle, you caught each other. It's amazing.
Yes, I think: amazing the way a tidal wave is amazing. Now the two of you are suspended over a rift reaching down to the earth's bowels. If one of you lets go, you will tumble into the abyss.
I like to think it's as if you saw someone across a chasm and walked for miles over stones and rubble, the desert, parched and aching,
until you find a bridge. And in the middle, you meet and quench each other's thirst.
Some days, I drown in children. Their you ain't my mama-s little boy!-s stop touching me-s the way they call for me every other minute. This is too hard He's touching me Are we done yet? I come home dragging sobbing
I can't do this
Other days: the scent of success is sharp. I swoop through the room like a hawk listening, watching, telling them
Yes, you do have to write five words No, you may not use the bathroom I should not hear any talking
and when the room goes silent, I am ten feet tall.
I crave you. Not like the desert craves rain, which is what people always say.
People are wrong. The desert does not crave. She sleeps, waiting for her allotted centimeters.
If I slept so, my heart would sheathe itself in waxy leaves. In the glacial night, it would race across the sands, too fast for viper or fennec or falling temperatures. I would crave you like the desert craves rain-- which is to say, not at all.
I am not so dry and vast. I am a rainforest, teeming with secret rustlings and matings. Waterfalls thunder in my veins.
You move through me like a panther in the night, a silky pelt slinking through the shadows, paws padding down my back. Your teeth are gentle on my shoulder.
Soak into my skin like the rain on a dart frog's bright back, the droplets glittering on bromeliads and the smooth skin of river dolphins.
I crave you like the rainforest craves its quenching meters, the deluge it cannot do without. The floodwaters that drive the cycles of birth and death, growth and rot. Life from life: the way I flourish in your light.
My name falls from your lips like a star streaking through the heavens. A wish I made with all my might answered in the single moment I saw its brilliance shooting through the night.
i. in and out like the ocean my lungs, my heartbeat, corpus every tendon and muscle strong in a way I never thought I was.
ii. naked and trembling with cold or nerves or pleasure I can't say the sun on my back, a gift, like the stars and moon.
iii. pounding the pavement in canvas sneakers and a hoodie learning the city through streets and sidewalks, alleyways, the little ranches and Cape Cods.
iv. tree bark rough beneath my fingertips in and out like my lungs, my heartbeat strong one body breathing all together.
v. alone in a restaurant naked pleasure I can't say I need someone to feel good in my own skin. I am enough.
vi. streets and sidewalks under my feet and I sweat my way through the city heartbeat quickening breathing free singing a song of myself.
vii. one body breathing all together you and I a communion of souls and skin on skin beautiful silent loud strong rocked to sleep like an ocean.
viii. I am enough and it is new. I have never been enough for myself. Now, strong and happy and good.
ix. singing a song of myself, I laugh at the wind and sky and sun. heartbeat quickening, breathing free.
x. strong in a way I never knew I was naked and trembling learning the city in and out like my lungs, my heartbeat. I am enough.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. — Henry David Thoreau, "Walden"
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