robyn
if we are all just mirrors
of the places we've born witness to,
then i would still love him for all of it
two things.
I. if i loved you any less
i would still swallow you whole --
II. that moment when you leaned in near to me
to say something just as fragile;
i was too caught up on slowing my heart to pay attention,
i always miss the important parts
he doesn't talk to me about the silver lining
he says, if i don't know it, he can't take me there;
it's a stillness in the collapsed lungs between our breaths,
and in the morning when he wakes up beside me
he pulls a journal from underneath his bed
writes down last night's dream
and doesn't let me read
at breakfast he will peel an orange
and for the rest of the day his hands will smell like sweet citrus,
but by breakfast i'll be gone
and have to remember them from the moving distance of my car
i want to see a plot-driven theory answering the mechanics of the world
why did you move
to move
(stepping over grass, you've made the soil too dense for worms to crawl to the surface -- every tiny bit of life is given to you from another's)
she said
Hell
is waiting for a definition.
The in-betweens of
one woman's finger's from the next,
a man plays music
by their candle-lit table,
and they look into each other's
eyes and just as all the room starts to sway
from the jesting of diners
- pointing with their forks -
but when they stand up to leave
(the bill was split)
it is a hug with one arm
(the weight of purses in priority)
and when they begin to walk
it is in different directions
forks breaking the skin of steaks.
nothing comes in as hard or as fast as the asymmetrical wanderlust that accompanies short-range shotguns in the passenger side of a two-door truck whose backseat you had to climb into before 4-a-m or risk being late to a cross-country road trip spurred by an existentialist fear projected onto the limits of geography & even though it's the closest to prayer you'll get it's the angriest you've been in a while, reasons to be against your father are substitutions for confession, he puts the guns in the front
the nostalgia of strangers' photo albums;
if i were to put something on the coffee table
for the entertainment of waiting visitors
i am not sure it would be my childhood
and i have been coached that domestic success
will manifest as annual portraits of well-dressed young couples in the holiday season
but the longest partner i ever held (for three days, arms-in-arms, legs&legs)
had matted hair and tangles
for the kind of photos
lovers only exchange among each other;
the snapshot of the back of your thigh
framed on the kitchen counter,
we have not decorated for winter.
william puts cigarettes out on the back of his palm;
forearm tattoo that reads 'grace' and bicep that says 'forever',
his step-father was a minister.
in grade ten he set the janitor's car on fire
for molesting the freshman girls,
he talks about ultimate respect
and his own inadequacies.
we both know he thinks too much
and the hours between 5pm when we first meet
and 2am when i become too cold
are spent looking in mirrors of each other,
testing sentences, saying 'me too.'
i think every person i've kissed is the one,
me too.
this idea of homecoming:
that after the long end has passed
you will come to me
as though i am an identifiable place that can be found, and static, and claimable;
i would love to map the movement of people
like constellations,
if your morning route left traces
i could see from the sky
--
i have been less romantic than this
but one day we'll be old
and think of all the stories we could've told
and even loving you will be finite
he could make my body new in white cloth;
but i will not stand before a minister for anything, not even for his bearing of witness
(and so they say, lord, for everything a reason --)
autumn was for whiskey
and every shot i took was aimed at your rocky mountain spine,
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