Secrets are
pressed between our bodies—
like pigeons in Saint Mark’s Square where
we have come to worship.
The seed man has arrived.
—
Pigeons clamber over cobblestones—
secrets over goose flesh dotting
our bones. And we do not wait.
We have come to worship.
Stand up; the river is cold.
The water comes from glaciers that your grandchildren
will never see. They will see the rocks worn by the water.
And they will see the scars left in the earth where the glaciers were.
Stand up. Your blood is growing cold like the water.
Your eyes are blue like suspended limestone particles in the lake.
Stand up; the river is cold and your body is cold.
Stand up. The glacier is gone.
We formulate love with words. I sit next to her and she sits next to me on a bench in the city near a parked taxi. Words come out of our mouths and they are laced with desire and half truths. The two mingle like cherry blossoms and car exhaust near the park. But we don’t care. Experience turns us into its puppets. Say this. Don’t say that. Hint at this. Be blunt about that. The birds in the oak leaning over us laugh. We’ve glanced before. We’ve met before. She and I know all the same or right people and we both enjoy park benches. The wrinkles around our eyes turn into teleprompters. I hate this, but do it anyway. We will have coffee. We will have dinner. We will laugh on cue and conjure enough empathy to hide our apathy. Then our words will bend around an idea and we will bend around each other. When we do this often enough there will be a name for it; love. This is what words do when formulated correctly. Some people don’t know that this is how it works. But I do, and she does. So while we sit on the park bench formulating a future as predictable as the seasons, birds laugh, and the scent of cherry blossoms is smothered by carbon monoxide of a taxi parked by the curb with no purpose. And this may all last as long as the cherry blossoms, as most beautiful things do.
I want you as a tattoo. I want you as a tattoo far from my heart and bleached under my skin. I want you as a tattoo—so beautiful—so always never fresh and new. But far from my heart. I want to see you in mirrors on my skin. I want you to be the cloud on my canvas of skin. I want you as a tattoo and I want you hidden like a neon sign under a bed sheet. Or the sun under a storm cloud—just burn it all away. Lightening strikes on my existence. I want you as a tattoo, far from my heart, but you can still make me bleed.
Her green eyes. Her. GREEN. Eyes. At sunrise—her green eyes. When. We rise, her eyes are. Are her lies—why we rise. And I see light in them. Light like life-like light emeralds in facets unflawed. Cut like—bright like—lies at midnight. Under an innocent moon. Her. Green. Eyes. Wrapped by her head. Wrapped in her hair. Whispers of—just—do it [I don’t care]. Share. The tears. What tears no tears what tears no tears. Go away. And the lies in her green eyes.
I trust the fog that hugs the mountains in June. But I am reminded of loneliness as I watch the conifer branches comb the vapor and lift it off the mattress of brown needles. All footsteps here are silent. I reminded of the feeling that pulls at every sinew of a man’s ribcage only to stretch it around a reason as hollow as the raccoon’s large oak. Crows begin to punctuate the morning with their warnings. The stream is up. Only a few rounded rocks can be seen through the clouds of silt. And then they are gone again. I trust the fog that hugs the mountains in June because I can see the snowed caps and fractured segments of the earth still jutting into the sky before disappearing into clouds again. I cannot trust the water because I cannot see the rocks. I do not know if this is the difference between trust and faith. Each rock in the stream could have been a mountain—worn into nothing by time and the rippling of water. But I will only trust the mountains I cannot move. There are no lies there.
I’ve been bourboning more than I’ve been writing, but you all haven’t seemed to miss me much.
I have found secrets between your lies that bounce between your lips like notes to a song everyone knows. I keep them. They are crimson ribbons I tie to bare tree limbs. Nesting birds take them and make homes. The ones that are left turn into bleeding icicles. You lie to me and I like this. I hold my breath and my lungs ache. We die too slowly to feel more than pulses and shifting winds. I felt your pulse once. In your wrist and thigh like a cello’s vibrato. We sank into harmony as my touch grew lighter and slid. I found each of your harmonics. And the notes came along with the lies. And the secrets filtered into my lungs and into my blood and into my pulse. And I became your harmony.
She says no. February is in her voice as she steps into an SUV she can’t make payments on. She convinces herself that I am the man her father was.
Her ankles are beautiful.
She closes the door and wishes on a star, but only the yellow flicker of a street light answers. I think she wishes for my death.
This is my admission of defeat, yet she retreats as if victory is the injured wolf I see in her eyes. She is terrified of her achievement.
Years ago I learned to wait for the temperature to drop before exhaling. Now I fear I will hold my breath forever. She starts the engine.
I think of how our words snapped at frail ideas like a tattered flag desperate for a calm day. Now it is calm and the engine hums down an empty street.
I imagine she won’t cry. She will grip the steering wheel until her knuckles are glaciers on her hand. She stares holes into red lights and stop signs.
My breath burns in my lungs and the words that I should have said seep into my pulmonary arteries. I wish for a stroke. I begin to pray that the side of me that feels will be paralyzed and I envy those who are rational enough not to trust.
My prayer is interrupted by sleep and a dream about love that only exists on lips and finger tips. But this is safe.
Let’s walk to the ocean. Let’s dip our toes in the still waves and let water that has touched a thousand shores run over our feet. We can take deep breathes. We will inhale a lifetime of sighs and gasps. The water will be in our veins and tears and settle around our minds. We will walk forever under the waves along fault lines and continental shelves. We can walk around the ring of fire and watch the earth’s blood cool around our feet. New islands will form. Mountains will slide into the oceans. And beneath the miles of water we will watch the waves extinguish our only star each night and chase it back to the horizon until morning.
That loving feeling, she has lost it.
She said I want to think about my teeth in your thigh
and down the street a cable car wrecked
a fire started and the hydrant was blocked.
She asked are you ignoring me and a byciclist
picked a wedgie near the vegetable stand
where she always buys asparagus.
I didn’t answer, but I shut off the news.
I closed the window and dead bolted the door
and got out my toothbrush and took off my pants.
She asked are you ready and I told her a pound of
my flesh was hers, but no drops of blood.
We pretended we were spiders as we lay in the hammock. Though which spider had caught which was unsure. In either case we sunk our teeth into each other. Deep. She said leave me alone I’m not a fly. And I said I know. But bit harder and we swayed. There were clouds and they were more grey than usual. The wind was slow. The grass blades grew board and begged grasshoppers to spring into them and they did. An ant climbed one blade of grass and was overwhelmed. She said I’m not dead yet and I said I know. Our web swayed more. The trees bowed. Gravity pulled at our organs and also at the pollen and dust settling on our skin. We held still to hold butterflies. Then we both realized that neither of us were spiders. But together we were spiders. She said we have eight legs now and I said we have four eyes now. And we did not know how many teeth we had all together but those were combined too and we were one spider in one web. Insects stayed away and the trees and hammock swayed and gravity pulled at gravity and a grass blade where a terrified ant gazed at an expanse before him. We were a spider but I wish I was an ant on a grass blade overlooking the universe. Instead I overlooked her and she began to live in my arms.
I want to
blow up
the meth lab
in your heart
and choke to
or burn to
or overdose to
death on your
fragments.
Sometimes I want to pump
electricity through you and
hang you up in my window
like a neon sign
in a country farmhouse.
