the crows all know my name by heart now.
they gather along the telephone wires
gathering at any intersection, all the places we went
i pretend theyāre black stitches trying to keep the sky together after it all came crumbling down. have you heard?
the towns burned to the ground & everyone died in the riots
suddenly youāre a politician, presenting your best lies
here i stand, naked & bruised
in the wreckage of a former century
it didnāt really go like that
there was no celestial acknowledgment of what had occurred
life would never let either of us have that dignity
it was just an ordinary afternoon that divided my life into a before and an after
nothing remarkable to tell you, except for the fact that something magnificent used to stand there. they whisper, they say aliens built it, because they canāt believe we could possibly make something of that scale & size
nothing graceful about how i handled things. at least we agree on some things.
who arrive in your life already carrying the stench of being a distant memory
you were standing in the doorway & i was screaming at you because you couldnāt understand me, & i realized you were looking at me the same way i would watch summer thunderstorms from the safety of the windows at the old house in wake forest as a child
there is something humiliating about all of this
but also wildly and profoundly freeing
that in you iāve met my match
bare faced & bare skinned
people like me are born like this
with an absence inside of them
that no amount of love can negotiate away
i recognized you almost immediately, which should have been warning enough, thought of you in every moment
heard you in every song so i stopped listening to music
saw you in every face so i stayed inside
dreamt of you every night so i stopped sleeping
we call this whole thing a cruel act of fate to our friends because we are ashamed of the alternative
weāll call it whatever we want
what if you had left sooner?
what if none of it meant anything at all?
what if it meant everything?
i havenāt found satisfactory answers yet & pretty much all i do is sit around & think nowadays
iād like to pretend iām a philosopher of some kind
winter this year has arrived exactly when it is expected. bitter, stinging, cold. slept outside for two weeks and thought of you with every frozen tear on my face.
the dead remain dead & itās radio silent between us, though i still tune in & hope for a frequency i can still hear you on
itās funny like that. itās something i donāt really understand. somehow,
despite every humiliation at the hands of another
every abandonment of the self
every impulsive act of passion
the heart continues manufacturing hope
from absolutely nothing. still stood at the front door clutching the fragments
i think this may be the defining tragedy of being human.
our absolute refusal to participate gracefully in loss,
talk about the bad parts more than the good because i feel like you still exist there
carry my suffering over my head as a spoil of war
as if all of this hurt i carry is evidence that i have lived more deeply than everybody else
crying in the grocery store & other fun adventures
iād like to think we feel a different kind of pain than anyone else, iād like to think you feel all these ways too but iāll never tell
iām not supposed to look back but i donāt want to go on without you
for twenty minutes longer than necessary & pray to you like youāre god, like maybe youāll hear me, that maybe youāll answer
but like god, i doubt you
another name i canāt bear to hear
