genie

When the moments I cherish now were so abundant and were given to me in such quick succession and with such a reception, by me, of undeservedness, the moments I reflect on them without you there are especially hard to take

I tried really hard to take a picture with my mind

When we were sitting on the hood of my car at the top of Mt. Baker, with a blanket around us and snow behind us

The sky was incomprehensibly massive and ash from our cigarettes glowing as it fell seemed like the only thing less than heavenly in scale

That night was dark but the millions of stars lit up the snow

And the lodge that looked so tiny a mile off to our right

Some strings of words bring memories of you so detailed that my senses would believe you were really here -

You bury your sharp chin into my shoulder and I can feel you haven’t shaved since yesterday

You stretch out your hands in a certain way to gesture as you speak, and your laugh makes me shiver

And the sweetness of your brown eyes, the little crinkle beneath each one, when they fleetingly meet mine over my chessboard

And the way your voice is different when you murmur something to me from right behind my ear, and your smell and warmth are so indescribably comfortable

I fall asleep so easily when my bed still smells like you

But it’s harder now that it no longer does

I’m laying here in my bed that only smells like me

And I can hear a woman crying in the next apartment, and though I don’t know the reason for her pain I also feel like crying very often these days

Like alone in my car driving down Lakeway in the morning

And one song you once told me to listen to comes through my stereo and punches me in the chest

And all I can feel for a second is both our misery, over whatever it might be, and suddenly I’m crying almost too hard to see the road

I exist perpetually in restlessness because I am so disconnected from my emotions I fear I don’t get across to you or anyone how much they mean

And don’t feel like I understand how to act like a human being, or to form any emotional connection

But in that moment and so many others, I was almost free from that restlessness

With you I’m either crushed by it or nearly freed from it and I don’t know why

That’s how come it stings to reflect on times you were there, now that you aren’t

I didn’t cherish the times of liberation deeply enough, or perhaps I caused them to end with my incapability to maintain a human connection, or by forgetting how to act like a person

Still, I had probably fallen too fast and dedicated too much of myself too soon, but it’s been long enough now that I don’t really care

You are older than me and a lot more beautiful and seem to understand the world a lot better

But I remember the picture I took with my mind during that meteor shower in perfect detail

Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of human is through love and in love.

I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for the brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way-an honorable way-in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.

you pick me up from my apartment. there's a just-lit cigarette in your mouth again, like a long time ago the first time I ran down the hill and across the road to meet you. And the sound of your little engine idling is almost drowned out by the opening track of some album you've recently found and wanted me to hear.

When you reach over to turn it down and ask me, "What's up", in that way you do, the friendly fold under each dark eye of yours make me want to kiss you,

but I don't, because I know you need me at a distance (one just long enough to hurt my heart a little bit every time I have to stop myself),

if you are going to stay anywhere close to me at all.

I clench my teeth and do my best to remember not to take a thing about you for granted, in this moment I have you, which I know is to be fleeting just as all the others have been.

we're in a store now, and the heavy night-sky velvet of this dress hides the sharpness of my bones. Do you like it? "Yes," you say, so tall in the tailored jacket you've just shrugged on, which almost matches. I buy the dress.

I have never felt you asleep in my arms, though I have fallen asleep in yours.

we do look like we could be rich, maybe, don't we? we are laughing and you are trying to find a pair of boots in your closet that aren't too chewed up. And it's a bit hard to breathe at the touch of your thumb gently pulling the bit of hair at the back of my neck aside to screw the clasp of a 5 dollar necklace closed.

I have never tried to hate you during the times you're gone, because I know I wouldn't be able to.

it's been a long time since either us of have slept. we're drinking coffee at 5 o'clock and I'm thinking over and over how little of an idea you must have of how much you mean to me. I've tried to show you so many times, and usually it makes you turn and disappear again.

It hurts my heart, but you're here right now, and I could touch you, but I don't, I just finish my coffee and smile at how different we look.

there's a layer of fog over the bay that never burned off today, and the angle of the february sun is turning it gentle orange during our drive.

we have dinner at a place we can't afford, just for the sake of doing something that'll make us feel alive this day. we can look across the water through the bay windows, smoking again (the next of so many times today, it's starting to feel disgusting), and ash our cigarettes into crystal ashtrays on the table. we're in disguises, me small in the swimming inky skirt of my velvet, almost as tall as you when I stand with my black stilettos, and you with a ponytail down the back of your smoothly fitting jacket (hair combed neatly for once); aside from your mascara and the same ring on your black-maniqured finger; aside from my ineradicable bedhead, we look like different people.

we don't know each other at all, do we?

you drive me back to yours, both tired but feeling alive at the sweet stupidness of what we've done with the day. isn't it always the most intense bittersweetness with you?

It's quiet and the sun has been down a while, and you slowly beat me in a game of chess, propped on our elbows on your bedroom floor.

maybe tonight you'll finally sleep through the night as I sleep in your arms.

I guess I can never have you. you're like a whisp of smoke. anything I try to do to make you stay will make you disappear, so I have to stop trying, and even to stop wanting you to stay.