do all lovers feel they’re inventing something?

*

That summertime was pale. I was young and I choked on diseased zeros, couldn’t cough up the hundreds that made my stomach shrink like asteroids coming within close proximity to earth. I spoke in clouds of ash, went days without proper sentences aside from the night nurse coming in to see if I was still alive. I always was. I read dictionaries from Spain and cut out photographs of pouting models, whales bursting from the waters, birds of paradise. I put out my cigarettes into tea cups. I ate fried chicken and puked. I was living alone in a small home for idiots like me. Who couldn’t stop picking at pink, screaming sores. Who couldn’t eat without reminders. Who couldn’t focus on anything but the way raindrops fall onto glass. The building held magic. All kinds of angels. 

At night, I counted the cracks in the ceiling above me. Imagined each crack was a bolt of fairy light attempting to make contact. I’m here. I’m right here. I watched television most afternoons, flipping through the channels until I found naked women. I watched with intent. I kept the windows open, watching the people on the other side of the glass. How a man walks into a grocery store and back out again. No qualms. I did mathematics on the walls in pencil. This kept me calm, remote and still. The nurses always nagged me about it but I never did care. I found the line of symmetry; the sadness dissipated. I solved for x; I could breathe. The world was a puddle of technicolor rain. I couldn’t make sense. // 

In August, I fell in love with a man who lived a couple of rooms down. He wasn’t any cartoon prince. And he was by no means going to save me. He had lots of curled hair and big hands. His knuckles were always bruised.  And he hardly spoke. But this is what I liked. The graph of silence between us. I liked guessing his thoughts. Are you down? Do you want to go down to the Hudson River and drown? Do you like the way I wear my hair? 

After we fucked on his small, wooden bed, we laid on his carpet and he told me about his favorite colors. His feet pushing onto mine. 

The color red is like a curse, he said. I always avoid red. But the color brown is the slow drizzle of honey right into your mouth. A medicine. 

What about white? I asked. This was my favorite. 

White is rain, he said. How it washes everything out. A new start. 

Magdalene - Marie Howe

[Transcript under the cut]

*

Tonight there must be people who are getting what they want.

I let my oars fall into the water.

Good for them. Good for them, getting what they want.

The night is so still that I forget to breathe.

The dark air is getting colder. Birds are leaving.

Tonight there are people getting just what they need.

The air is so still that it seems to stop my heart.

I remember you in a black and white photograph

taken this time of some year. You were leaning against a half-shed tree,

standing in the leaves the tree had lost.

When I finally exhale it takes forever to be over.

Tonight, there are people who are so happy,

that they have forgotten to worry about tomorrow.

Somewhere, people have entirely forgotten about tomorrow.

My hand trails in the water.

I should not have dropped those oars. Such a soft wind.