Stalemate
I can’t write today. All of my thoughts are false starts, no movement, no cohesion. Rusty doornails will give you tetanus; shots in the arm as a child, and the doctor would only count: one, two. A Scooby-Doo bandaid once. I don’t think you need to be angry, or resentful. I don’t need anger. When you moved to Boston, I knew you would have a life there but I have no imagination
for such things, so you hardly crossed my mind. You said you watch online chess matches in your free time, grand masters and novices. What a strange detail, very like you. Random bits of memory and dust are catching on fly paper, no flies today; the backs of my hands, stuck, peeling tiny hairs from their safe houses. When I am left alone, which is often, I tend to wander. When warmth had finally settled on the night, I walked down to the football field, silent and emptied out, numinous. I pretended I was a professional athlete: pushups and situps and leg lifts and flutter kicks; and I ran
in circles but I have no imagination for shapes and less stamina, so as my breath heaved from my body, I lay flat upon my back and gazed at the stars–how could anyone piece together constellations from this endless, fragmented mess? Dream about masks and carnival games, soda machines, strange trinkets lining the walls, another dream about a mansion, a labyrinth, a corn maze; I never find my way, another dream in which I am missing something unidentifiable and my teeth fall out one by
one. Along the Liverpool harbor, I told her about you, some odd form of projection. I said, sometimes you hang onto another person because you find a necessity within them, a need, and to be fair, the relationship is give and take; the need may be temporary, unreturned, unresolved, falling violently or gently away. I occasionally imagine her walking back into my life in a casual way, ordering a side salad with Balsamic. I owe her
money. The other day a coworker asked why I was single, but I think I have more than explained; if anything, it’s my poetry. I say that I am a concrete person, put me in a mixer and pave your city sidewalks; once, coming upon wet cement, too afraid to put my hand down, my foot down, any body part, too cautious to leave a sign of my transitory passing. Now there is time to worry, to take care, to take shelter where there is shelter, to save, to plan, to let the sun reinvigorate skin as clouds drift overhead.
