and other whole-grain loves that escape us both

i can knit over,

and i’ll show you a lesson you can learn,

fast. here,

give me your numbed hands,

and i promise i’ll take them gently

for once. here,

the circle of my arms.

i listen for the grace you’ve promised me,

but it’s hard to hear anything

over the patter of rain.

tonight, it streams over us. by morning,

these skylights will be washed clean.

still, i like to imagine what i might hear.

i’d like to think it might sound

like forgiveness. but either way,

i know it will sound

like goodbye.

miserable and broken.

wildflower loves, wildflower encounters.

fuck them all. i already know how it’ll go

when everything gets washed

out to the ocean. i know

what will happen if i need your words,

need your time, need

your blood, need your

love.

but i don’t really know what i’ll do after. do

you?

i don’t want bukowski’s hummingbirds

either. i want everyday permission to

love and

to stay and to be

who we want.

because as far back

as i can remember,

despite everything—

nearly every time

we still recognize her easily,

and immediately. and almost

always, to love her again

is just as easy as knowing her.

sometimes it’s even easier than that.

like breathing. or leaning in. or falling

back down a hill.

excerpt from one of my favorite papers on senecan tragedy, arranged into verse

the limit and boundary between

what we can and cannot assume about

the playwright’s intentions—

lies at the edge of

intended effect on audience.

remember that all we have is his

presentation of people, stimuli, and

the reactions between the two—

his crafted world, by which

he is trying to talk

to you.

dangerous to forget you’re

implicated. dangerous to forget that

in some way, you have also

bled, slightly, into this shared

concept of a person.

if he’s talking to you, then you

have to be listening.

there is no story without your point—

and my counterpoint. we are now in this theatre

together. and we are here because

we have both made some

dangerous assumptions.

what is the difference, between

questioning the nature of a reality, and

and questioning that reality’s maker? or

is there a difference between loving

the image you’ve formed of a person, and loving

the person who formed for you—

the basis of that image?

well, obviously.

but this conjured character, in some ways,

lives his own little private reality

in your head now. and what’s

he going to do now? what

might he say next? surely,

you can guess. because

you think you know them. maybe

even better than the author.

easy to get mixed up sometimes. perfectly

understandable. one pours so much

of oneself, into these things. and—

if this person, this fabricated person,

were somehow to disappoint you,

to turn out not quite

exactly as you wanted, to not quite

be anywhere even near

about to say something,

or anything at all, that

you want to hear—

well that’s pretty much to be expected,

isn’t it? it’s really just

one of those things. and

when the bitter edge of disappointment

still draws blood from the

both of us, whose fault

will it be then—

yours, or