there was a point in time that there was a point a time. it’s all a blur as to when. it’s all a blur as to now. now it’s all a blur. this is what i’m talking about. nothing is lost. it’s all been lost. time. my friend. my enemy. my elusive lover. my beast. my better. this is what is lost once i start talking. time is lost. the words get lost. there is no atmosphere here, there is only the impending silence. the impending doom of time. i’ve said it so many times it’s lost in time, about time, it’s about time we wrote about what we’ve lost. and it’s ridiculous. higher than ever before despite the pandemic. they’re still here, my children, my mortal reminders of my mortality. i shot up in the dark the other night. the inevitability, the steady course, the unwavering destination, i saw it in my mind’s eye but i felt it in my bones. we laugh now, we all sit around and laugh. yes i can deadlift 300, 400, 500 pounds, but it’s right around the corner, right there, can’t you see it? it’s not an imagined point on the other side of the horizon, it’s not even on the edge of the horizon, it’s the next fucking destination. stiff bones, stiff joints, the difficulty in the hip, in standing, the crick in the back, i kept imagining myself needing a cane. can you believe it? me, a cane, because i couldn’t get off the shitter.

my love,
we think of valentine’s day as one for lovers, soon to be lovers, quiet lovers, shy lovers emboldened to burst free and proclaim their earnestness. we think of valentine’s day as a day for old lovers, cute wrinkled raisons, holding hands on a porch, teasing each other, gently bickering, confident that as they end their lives they’ve made the right decision in each other, as if it was the only inevitable to decision to make.
when we think of valentine’s day, we don’t think of the steady-state lovers. the halfway through this life lovers, the ones who have had ups and downs and hardship and fight and make peace and laugh not knowing why or how but for the sheer joy of laughing with each other. the lovers who have found their groove, who move in and through each other with learned grace and expert care. the lovers who know better, the lovers who know too much, the lovers who are often no longer though of as lovers.
and i am vexed. i’m not ready to be the old-timey’s: there’s a certain kind of fatality with them, a certain resignation. yes they found their souls mates but it was inevitable, it was long decided, it was …hopeless? and i don’t want to a youthful one either: too much anxiety, too much dread, too much how do i look and too much i don’t want to say anything stupid. there’s too much in the way of actually just being with someone that has nothing to do with the someone you want to be with.
i looked it up: st valentine was a martyr. he married people that were forbidden to do so. while imprisoned he cured the sight of his jailer’s daughter. there was also more than one. it makes me think of that song by depeche mode, a man in love becoming a missionary or that other song by seal, future love paradise, embracing all forms of love. and i think of the summer nights that led up to september of 1995, the isolation and determination i had felt to be alone, to be one and only. i think of the darkness of those nights and the ones after, where you shattered it.
where you brought warmth, where you brought a tentative, shy kind of hope. where you freed me by being free yourself. and that’s what i want valentine’s day to be: not to remember and hope, dream and forgive, but to be, to be in love, to be with each other as each other. to be timeless, forever and always.
-me
2021.02.14