early and instant blue.

my mother’s trust issues are leaking into my chest and I’ve got my father’s nose and his tendency to stop calling back so I’m sorry about the 9 missed calls I have from you and the 6 voicemails I never played I swear I’d love you if I could

when you kiss it feels like love it always feels like love and suddenly, somebody is in love with your laugh and your eyes the way you eat spaghetti the way your smile is always crooked. They’re in love and maybe you’re someone who should be loved (someone who deserves it) But then there’s the tidal wave  after three years or two months or six months and four days, when suddenly they look at you and your laugh isn’t anything special and the way your eyes line with laughter at the sides no longer does anything for them It’s falling and it’s screaming and it’s then why the fuck did you say all those things in the first place, oh god, oh my god, it’s becoming the one they used to love or at least you think because  well you’re not really sure how they felt not anymore but (they had to have meant it, right? right?) It’s nostalgic and addictive and it’s your ripped up heart on the ground  it’s remembering the way crooked smiles used to make them laugh and now makes them look away

When did you learn to lift with your knees / Years later,                  a girl at a party watching you lift yourself onto the counter - something about how savage your elbow look; hooked as a scythe, your mouth - always lifted / when you speak: All of the Gods know that something has gone terrible wrong,       Atlas, of the first men / Atlas, of the primal places that we fear to speak of - tell them / what the world does   to a person.

My left hand will live longer than my right. The riversof my palms tell me so. Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish at the same time. I think praying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I think staying up and waiting for paintings to sigh is science. In another dimension this is exactly what’s happening, it’s what they write grants about: the chromodynamics of mournful Whistlers, the audible sorrow and beta decay of “Old Battersea Bridge.” I like the idea of different theres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass, a Bronx where people talk like violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehow kind, perhaps in the nook of a cousin universe I’ve never defiled or betrayed anyone. Here I have two hands and they are vanishing, the hollow of your back to rest my cheek against, your voice and little else but my assiduous fear to cherish. My hands are webbed like the wind-torn work of a spider, like they squeezed something in the womb but couldn’t hang on. One of those other worlds or a life I felt passing through mine, or the ocean inside my mother’s belly she had to scream out. Here when I say “I never want to be without you,” somewhere else I am saying “I never want to be without you again.” And when I touch you in each of the places we meet in all of the lives we are, it’s with hands that are dying and resurrected. When I don’t touch you it’s a mistake in any life,in each place and forever.

In other languages you are beautiful – mort, muerto – I wish I spoke moon, I wish the bottom of the ocean were sitting in that chair playing cards and noticing how famous you are on my cell phone – picture of your eyes guarding your nose and the fire you set by walking, picture of dawn getting up early to enthrall your skin – what I hate about stars is they’re not those candles that make a joke of cake, that you blow on and they die and come back, and you, you’re not those candles either, how often I realize I’m not breathing, to be like you or just afraid to move at all, a lung or finger, is it time already for inventory, a mountain, I have three of those, a bag of hair, box of ashes, if you were a cigarette I’d be cancer, if you were a leaf, you were a leaf, every leaf, as far as this tree can say

Tell me where to package Your mouth and your teeth your eyes and your heart and your god damn collarbones They’re not sure where to go anymore And the smile I had just for you? The one I kept for 2 am With the lights off in your bed Where do I put that? Do I tuck it under my bed in a box Labeled do not touch for fear of lighting a match I won’t be able to put out again? Or do I rip it into pieces like paper And let it fly out the window And the “I love you” The “I can’t believe I get to wake up next to you” The “I missed you today did you miss me too?” Do I tuck them under my lashes For when the pain becomes too much to bear And shed them out with the tears? Tell me where you put the love so quickly Give me somewhere to put everything you gave up on So that I can look like I’m good at living without you, too.