7 Days Until

Day 1.
Like we were the last to get it.
A puzzle melted, drained, molded,
cut with string by the daughter of a demi-god,
dropped into time and
set into motion.

We were the last to know
ourselves,
the truth of us.

Like a joint surprise birthday party.
No. Like amnesia from a bad accident
that made us forget what Christmas was
and forty years later when we see the needles,
the bulbs humming and radiating,
we know again what we'd always known,
but mysteriously forgotten.

Day 2.
Time being mortal herself,
existing only in the minds of we decaying bodies,
sees us create flecks of the eternal
and is overcome with an embarrassing hiccup fit
(which she only gets when she's truly jealous).

How dare we know of a thing like this--
Rough fingertips on greasy summer backs.
A thing more powerful--
How dare we decaying bodies skip mortality
like 3rd period senior year
by finding another decaying mouth and
pressing our chapped lips against it
like our tongues are fireflies
and our mouths are empty Smuckers jars.

Day 3.
Pretend we all believe in God here.
Now.
Pretend we all believe God loves people.
Now be a person.

You're starting to understand my overwhelmedness.

Day 4.
If an extra second together delays that
scrape your stomach out like a young jelly coconut
sickness
for an extra second,
I'm taking it.

Because five minutes before I got out of the car,
I saw you take a flight,
bald first in the front and then in the back,
love a younger woman then vomit for a month,
then leave her,
remember the joys of football, fishing, and me,
and die.

And I tell you, I mean it, my heart broke.
Because it will truly
all
happen that fast.

Day 5.
I write emails,
I eat Raisin Bran,
I blast bad pop music,
I pray,
I sleep,
I cough louder than I do in public,
I pick my nose,
I drink,
I watch the stars and feel enormous,
I humble myself,
I start novels,
I wait.
I do all this like always,
only now I imagine you seeing it all
and loving it.

Day 6.
Frantic. Caffeinated and late
is how my cells, my whole self
feels.
Like an Adderall binge--
like I thought they were so small and cutely blue
that I took four at once to make sure they'd kick in and
GOOD GOD did they ever.

Now I'm racing the clock for a deadline
that may or may not be coming.
Grasping frantically with subway car palms at a body
that may or may not be coming.
On the last car of a late train,
and you say there's always next time,
but you forget I leave tomorrow.

How many stops til ours?
How many blocks til ours?
How many stairs,
how many turns of the key to the left or the right?
How many gasps interrupted by sighs?
How many mid-dream laughs?
Mid-sleep coughs?
Snoozed alarms?
How many kisses goodbye?
How long til you forget?
How long til I do?
And after all that how much will it have mattered?
More or less than it seemed in the beginning
when everything was
the start of a fugue
or the end of an era?

Day 7.
And as much as I liked it,
I have to leave today.
And I think I might become asthmatic,
if I have to keep breathing with your
sticky, sugary, body warm fingerprints
smudged all up and down my soul.

It's too much to ask of me.
It's more than I asked for.
Now.
You're starting to understand.

Every One Day (evergreen)

1.
There is a garden
where sweet seeds snuggle
and rain falls like a swooning lover
into the earth.

There was a seed
that under the perfect circumstances
would one day rouse from its slumber
to become the rarest,
most pointlessly stunning
bloom of wist and aerie.

One day
the sky was an abacus,
the sun in strained balance
with the clouds, with dust in the air,
worms self-germinating beneath.
And the seed felt compelled to grow.

That day the garden
was a page ripped haphazardly
from a fairytale.
The other blossoms
wilted, turned away,
and donned burlap.

By nightfall,
the new, bright flower
had already ashed over.


2.
Last week, I wrote our names in the A train very tiny, but in Sharpie. I thought as I wrote it that one day someone would find it, but by then I might not know you anymore. Que sera, sera.


3.
if i ever build a house
i want walls
of pine.

someone told me pine is a softwood.
oak is stronger.
i should use oak instead.
maybe pine for the kitchen table.

but oak trees are never full
in the winter months.
they are dead.
they are old people’s hands
pleading to the heavens:
more time!

pine trees are evergreens.

i want pine walls.
pine is a hardwood.
pines are green every day.
no matter what.


4.
The fairytale book
will have that page ripped out forever,
all because of that
stupid, magical, dead seed.


5.
I didn’t think I cared about the names. But I walked through the A train the next day and couldn’t find us. Then I remembered there’s more than one A train.


6.
there was a thunderstorm last night.
lots of pine trees fell over
on top of each other
and through people’s windows.

it made me angry to think
that such a hardwood
would not stand up to
a little wind and water.
might as well be deciduous
with a will that thin.

someone told me
the southern live oak
is an evergreen.

if i ever build a house
i want walls
of southern live oak.


7.
For only two bucks I spent the day riding trains with my sharpie under central park, new dramatists, sin sin. I tried not to waste time. I’d get on, write our names, and next stop get off. It was hours before I saw us five trains in a row and decided to go home.

Now, every “one day” we’ll race together like a forest fire beneath our restless city. Forever. No matter what.

into october

As a firm chill solidifies that which once pulsed
And a once full room becomes fuller with clutter,
Life is in one moment everywhere and the next
A self-doubting memory.

How much company I can be to myself
Is stretched by the degree of loneliness left,
The presence of vodka or any drink else,
Or simply my energy.

After seeing three such that were once bricks or stakes
And being so easily passed off and shuffled
No remorse, no revenge, no response at all,
I had no options left

But to lock myself into my room—the extent
Of all I now have and the world I now live in:
A vase of old flowers in water like clouds
From the one I can’t seem to forget.

i miss You

because the what comes after
is still more alluring
than the what is.

it isn't about a dream
or a crayoned fantasy
on construction paper.

it is a forgotten memory,
rustling like a fever
in the deep part of my bones

that i can't reach to scratch.
when i think of You
i think of the best times--

the ones that make all of this
such a beautiful wasteland,
a live wire of unbridled heartbeat.

remembering us then is different
than what they call faith,
because faith is believing

in that which cannot be proven.
i used to wake up in Your house
and eat breakfast in Your kitchen.

i've followed You to the secret place
and fallen asleep to the sound
of Your pen on the sky.

i will endure this summer camp of sorts
until the fever shatters my bones
like a prisoner making his escape.

then we will stay up
all night like we used to,
screaming and dancing,
laughing and sighing.

a song.

not poetry, but close enough. a song i wrote tonight...it sounds like a mix between jump, little children's "cathedrals," switchfoot's "let your love be strong," and the country of egypt in general...untitled.

if we existed...
if we existed...
if we could live above this life
i know i'd never cry
cause we'd never fight.

you make promises...
you make promises...
that only Superman could keep.
so although you mean well
i know they're always empty.

i remember in the beginning
we were selfless and so forgiving.
even time stopped to let us soar.
but what gets me down
more than the gravity,
is that we're perfect...
is that we're perfect...
but only circumstantially.

behind the sunrises...
behind the silences...
behind the endless day to day,
we aren't tired. we aren't worn out.
we're awake.

it's all so delicate...
it's all so delicate...
this balance we try to maintain.
but this is bigger than anything we could save.
we're such children in its face.

i remember in the beginning
we were selfless and so forgiving.
even time stopped to let us soar.
but what gets me down
more than the gravity,
is that we're perfect...
is that we're perfect...
but only circumstantially.

if we existed...
if we existed...
if we could live above this life.
i could wake up and be yours in the morning,
like i'm yours tonight.

i remember in the beginning
we were loving more than we were thinking
and reality was easily misplaced.
but what gets me down
more than the gravity,
is that you loved me
and we were perfect
but only circumstantially.