for so long

We inserted words
into spaces in the rain


Yr feet trudging home through puddles and I am glad. I don't know what you are thinking.

I will cough this out of me, cough my lungs hoarse and dry, pour more water down my dusty throat and pine for morning air.

Hocus pocus. Focus harder. Down behind the ink somewhere are wedged my indecisions, insomnias, incantations. I don't want to know better than to want you back. But I do. (Want you, and know.)

My itchy hips pitch fits. These woozy, snot-nosed dreams get less strange all the time. I sleep, and dream of bicycles and packages and record stores and vegetables. I dream about love like compost, messy and hot and beautiful. I dream of firm yellow squash and translucent onions browning in oil. And you, with yr pinned eyes, stumbling through all of my nightmares. I sleep so heavily with someone else near, comforting in the dark. I fall asleep so easily alone now, too.

What a way to start a fire!

kneejerk

These days I fall asleep slowly, wake up too fast, fold insomnia round me in a stiff approximation of selves I'd thought I'd lost. We stare at art 'til we're dizzy. I'm susceptible to patterns, to shifting lines. He said he liked the style with which I hightailed it from the room, out into the windy night.

The other day we danced to stay warm, pedaled out a sweeping arc through our cold, wet city, til our lungs burned like my wind-soaked cheeks.

It doesn't matter, because people fall in and out all the time. I could just pretend, for the sake of some solid, dreamless sleep. For the sake of the skin on my neck.

Snores are shaking the floorboards. There's a funny stale taste on my tongue, like cigarettes, or forgettery. The air by the doorway smells of sweet fermentation, around our cluster of colorful jars.

I'm grasping at the same threads that bind my hands behind my back.

redo

We talked for hours over burritos, about Vienna and cynicism, about food and poop and friends and sex and getting older. When we finally pulled our jackets back on, and walked outside, I unlocked my bike and we stood shivering while he smoked, in that strange familiar way that he pulls on a cigarette, breathy, like sipping through an empty plastic straw. He said, it's good to see you again. He said, we're the type of travelers who will meet up again in a year, or more, and neither of us will have changed. We'll swap our stories of might-have-been plans and how we don't know where we're heading. We'll talk about falling in love, and out again, and being better off in the end. I hugged him goodbye, a good long hug, and we kissed cheeks with loud smacks, and he smelled like old friendship on a chilly night.

cyanide seeds

lipstick of pomegranate juice. questions like fat tomatoes under a hungry eye. bedbugs, burnt onions, the soft warmth of our bare bellies and the glow of my cheeks in remembrance. no, i didn't know him. did you? i'll chip my teeth on my own longing; i'll dull the cracking ache with some smoke and mirrors and a pinned on grin, cheshire cat. he inhaled clay dust and all the rest - this tastes of nothing less than submersion. we swell like yellow jacket stings in the sweaty summertime, like webs of poison ivy scars on the backs of our legs. (i eat apple cores, now, because of you.)

howl o ween / milwaukee

I'm sleepy and snotty and sore, a little. It's nice when people stick around, when we sit at the kitchen table for hours and talk about pickles and kraut, draw on faces and pull on wigs and ride off slowly to far-off red glowing places, dark smoky soul dance parties where we'll polish off the whiskey and dance til the music is done.

What a strange time of year - the season is changing, but it can't make up its mind. It's snow one week and short sleeves the next, and all these beautiful bright trees shouting out colors into the fall. In Milwaukee, the streets are piled high with fallen leaves, the front porches are tall and inviting, and the houses are wooden and cozy, like Portland, or Carrboro. Nostalgia is a strange beast. Steep hills become novelties.

We slept a fitful sleep on thin mattresses in our tall van, dreamt of tow trucks and belltowers and ice on yr clothes. We biked around town on heavy cruisers with a James Brown tape playing from the milkcrate strapped to the front, and picnicked by a smelly lagoon by the lake, bought cheese curds and pickles from some aromatic market downtown. Cities feel so small after we adjust to Chicago.