royal mountain

coucou toi, you say
dipping me in winter before its time.
when you are gone, truly,
i will be so happy for you
for the sun,
for the satisfaction, for the many skins
and the many stems and the many hearts
that you will inevitably touch. for
now, a touch of sad when i wake
a few short breaths while i walk to work
the melancholy of autumn
mixed with the beauty of speed.

closets

fumbled cash into
the tip jar
satisfied with wasted dimes
stealing glances at windy roads
gusts, guests, gusto
a log cabin and a fire
illogically coinciding and hoping
the latter does not consume the first.
do you remember
when words were uttered
not about boys?

autumnal

so prepared to fall
that i have missed a meeting or two
forgotten a friend or so
looking at leaves and smiling at you
thinking of the fireside night
with wine and unseemly confessions,
you, my lover who has loved my lover
curled up with me, happy as a cat;
i will touch you until the sun goes down.

framing effects

if i look out of my window
i can see twelve windows
looking back at mine.

fretting

i think you would like me
the way you liked me three years ago
confusingly, obtusely, stupidly
letting me into worlds that ultimately
were. not. mine.
is this how men feel when they come home
from the moon? the familiarity and comfort
is not exciting or scary, not billowing or bold
gravity exists and it keeps me humble
and independent
and inquisitive
and you would love me now
if you didn't already know that love
ruins that which one loves.
so let's orbit, never cross paths
and i will learn to strum the songs we used to listen to
while you learned about tensile cables
and i learned about robotic ants
and both of us learned
that two is not so bad.

i think you would like me
if you hadn't crashed that car, the
blue one with the frozen door; if you'd
never seen me howl at the moon
in lonely joy. if you hadn't noticed
our orbit widening, our moons
fighting, our star deciding
what sort of star it was.
all of that uncertainty, like the faith of science
was too much for you and certainly
too large for me to contain
all on my own.
you lost one religion, and then you lost another.
driving in your car, lights dim,
you disapproving of my late night
medicine run, of my need for
medicine in the first place
of my knowing
that you need them too
you crashed, and crashed, and crashed
we didn't notice until months later.

i think you would like me
if you had treated me better
not blamed me for my pain.
i think you would like me
if you could have seen the moon
that i was on, the lightness of living
when we held hands.
i think you would like me
if i wanted you to like me anymore
if i tried harder to keep on liking you
if i just let you be
if i just didn't talk
if i didn't cry
if i sat against your wall, writing word after word about robotic ants
listening to the music settle in and grow inside of me.

there are certain talismans i have kept from our space romp
and you can't have them back.

peanut butter

you were and are strolling through my phobic depths
each footstep, breath, leaf taken in
you've seen it and crushed it and shown it me in
full-frame, 35mm, HD, with so cinematic an eye
could you not have seen this coming?
you, pushed into me and me into you by some cosmic
force that ultimately you've given up on
or no longer find tragic or peaceful or lonely or serene
all of those arts of emulsion we almost mastered
you invoke yourself in my morning prayers,
rituals involving push-ups, peanut butter, rice protein
(chocolate flavored to mask the insecurity)
the simple act of unscrewing the jar can unscrew my ducts
and my breakfast will become salty
and i will consume far too much sodium
like your brother
who shakes before he tastes, who acts before he thinks.
returning to the task in my hand: breakfast, insurmountable.
bananas, broken by palm, coconut oil (an unsustainable balm),
in the protein, in the milk. my hand is stuck
on the oily lid of our teddie peanut butter,
your favorite and by extension mine,
refusing to open for me or desiring to prolong the struggle
how easy to blame a teddy bear instead of oily physics.
i sputter and bump and curse and cry
memories rubbing off on my shirt, permanent stains, spilling
over the counter, dirtying the floor, tightening my shoulders
grabbing at my jaw, and then
i move to the sink for a rubber glove. the smack of its
approval lines things up straight.
i pick up the jar, thinking i've made morton obsolete
and read:
"separation is natural."

dealing with it

i am stuck
somewhere beneath the haze of
unfettered belief, the diagnostic release:
that final breath of understanding
as you hold back the tears and think
"this is it, this is an answer"
even if it is not the answer, even if, even if

your grey and squinty and fading eyes
don't linger on me much these days
maybe because i'm not looking for them
or can't; or maybe because it's true
we've changed
(indisputable, everything changes all the time)
and the shame i feel now is just the shame
of not trusting myself
enough to trust myself
when i feel unloved.