#therejectscorner

you fall towards me carefully like a fine spring rain and when your touch lands it’s only ever gentle the hollow against which we light our desperate candles can be mapped precisely onto the chasm of your neck sonya is the perfect name for you with your siberia of bedsheets waiting almost patiently for my eager repentance in your eyes there are angels but consider the electrons how frantic they might look if you aren’t in a hurry

we drink ourselves stuporous and think about violets like we do every night floodlights announce boats breaking the cool sleep of dublin bay as if it were nothing but waves—their lights are stars that pause like raindrops at your bedroom window no matter how intense the purple death is greater, death sings to us about a silence that isn't interrupted, is only deepened by the barely-there symphony of seagulls + whitecaps + traffic, moving slowly

seagulls drop cries like broken glass, and the river melts right in with a symphony of traffic. underneath this tree she wears a look i will only ever see once. it is difficult to describe. undaunted, maybe. not altogether happy but neither miserable. sufficient. right there—between two sets of willowbranch lashes— her eyes are screaming, are proclaiming to the world: well, for better or worse, here i am. i'm still here. do what you want, i don't care what you do but you'll never get all of me. hear me? not ever. i don't know what i want to do but i do want all of her and this throws up all kinds of problems given the look in her eye. instead of philosophising (for once in my life) i kiss her mouth. she watches me and so i kiss her again, and again, and then one more time, for consistency's sake.

don’t touch me she said twisting away from me don’t touch me i don’t like to be touched alright—fine by me—we can sit and smoke and maybe do some talking watch the time go no bombs, no surprises touch me she said after a few minutes had passed touch me i thought you didn’t like to be touched? that was then—this is now (apparently this is a reasonable way to behave, these days, when we are afraid and medicated and desperate for something or other) don’t touch me i won’t i promise, i swear, if you touch me i’ll scream in the end i did touch her of course and after all of the sweat and gasoline we found ourselves in the very ditch we’d been swerving to avoid isn’t it funny how humans behave when morning is close and the candle is about to go out

from up on the pulpit come far-off dronings of nietzsche and positivism and the problem with kant. i don't really listen: i'm too busy looking at you. well, you. the back of your head is all i can see, but i know from experience (empirically) that the front of your head is pretty indeed. in my head we go to naxos, havana, vladivostok. walk arm in arm across mesopotamian sand, washington valleys, the strong red earth of martinique. strangely, we don't fuck. sex has nothing to do with this particular fantasy, which makes for a welcome change. anyway: the lecture ends and the anxiety starts fresh. i run out as fast as i can to avoid talking to anybody. i can't see where you go, i don't turn back to look, but i'll be here tomorrow, and hopefully so will you, and then we'll have a crack at constantinople. we'll speak seven languages, we'll play chess in coffeehouses, we'll worry about invasions and plagues, we'll smoke opium and invent croissants— and later, when night's unwavering hand has painted over evening's optimistic rose we'll share the same bed like kids. like childhood friends.

uneasy halfdark of interrupted slumber. i lie on my back and think about nothing watching as sunlight stumbles towards us. my private aphrodite. a turk with greek eyes, lidded, heavy, too full of love to hold any truth. i can’t remember anything about the dream i was having (nor am i sure what woke me up) but none of that matters. in this quiet and unmade bed cold is an island your hair’s an ocean mortality’s a word. all death is is a different word. i’m going to live forever. it’s so clear to me, lying here like this. i’m going to live forever! i want to scream it, to terrify the neighbours and to ruin your sleep, we’ll be together in irritation, bound with anxiety’s overcomplicated knot, we’ll spit on each other’s bagels and steal cigarettes and kick dogs and buy some gear and pray that we overdose and strangle each other and fuck with anger not with love not ever again with love i’ll never make love to you again so help me god— i do nothing of the sort. i lie on my back. the sunlight keeps coming. when you wake much later and ask if i’ve been up for long i tell you that no, i haven’t, and you believe me, and we kiss, and then i remember that we are going to die after all both of us and i’m pleasantly surprised when i discover that the idea of sharing death with you is alright with me