shatter & fuck
comfort & cunt & compassion
sternum & femur & shit
delight & defiance & tongue
restless & alone
& all pronouns, in particular, “you”

i vivid wildly and akimbo, like some trestle flung over a dark highway, afire and crackling, seen for miles and threaten, fucking the moon orange and searing night of all comfort, stitching lip back over eyes, teeth for lightening for place.

and these things i say
to you, as the you that is always
entirely different
each time, cast a spell for “a moment
of hang time”
(as he once said to me, so many years ago, the pricelessness of it)
to hold it
together just once, and not
by meat hooks or
desire or
sorrow, but by denial
of gravity, of surrender, without need
or addiction, effortless
for all the effort and the pressure
of this world

and every smile is a fracture
of sadness, a breaking
open, a displacement
of place, a forgetfulness that erupts
across the surface, opening
an entire new point
of departure

she asks, “did you think it or did you dream it up?”
as if the dreaming and the thinking were two points separated, serrated, cut and distant as the difference between a burst of laughter and an accident between a cracked tooth in the mouth and the floor where the tiles meet exactly beneath our feet without peeling upward into lemon rinds stuck in my knuckles against the mesh of chicken wire to the point of uprooting the two by fours and nothing more, nothing more, nothing more
but he asks, “was the leaving and the going the same?”

she comes to him and kisses him full on the mouth. he says, i’ve always been stupid this way.
she unbuckles his belt, works on his cock. he smiles, she twists him in her hand, almost breaking skin. he winces, i’ve always been stupid this way.
she stands up and slaps him. he laughs, she picks up a rock and shows it to him. he whispers, i’ve always been stupid this way.
she smashes it across his face, some teeth fly. she drops the rock and quickly wipes his blood. he spits, i’ve always been stupid this way.
she cries and begs for forgiveness. she pulls him to the bed, plays with her cunt. he spits, i’ve always been stupid this way.
she turns over, guides his shaft in from behind. she grunts, you’ve got some fucking nerve. he leans in, whispers, i’ve always been stupid this way.

i had dreamt the nostalgia of someone else’s life. and in it they were very strong on the inside but the scars on the outside were still healing and she would never yield as he remembered.
and this was why he came back and again because she would not stop, because she could not stop imagining him or giving him some reason for a life that was not his nor mine but i could remember her for it.
the way he wanted to bring things all to an end desperately she would dig her nails into his neck and i could laugh because the love was so big and the lies too small to notice the bleeding on each side of this memory.
until the lies became like love and she believing one for the other or was that the other way around?
i would like to have some version of it that was not sinister but there was something to be said for that and i stuttered myself out of place suddenly when she finally relented and he quietly remembers only this life as his own.

she puts it in boxes because she doesn’t know what to say when he screams. she can find a place for it if she thinks hard enough and if she forgets long enough and if he just shuts up for a second she can fold the lid over and shove it aside. if he just shuts up long enough, she can remember how to love him again, she can think of him without having to remember why she was with him to begin with. she thinks to herself without saying a thing to him, please just settle down, at least let this box gather some dust.
she puts it in boxes because the alternative would be cutting her womb open and letting it all spill out and maybe just maybe he would slip on the floor and crack his head open to notice. instead she makes room in the box, makes room in the basement for each new box. they aren’t all his, but he seems to be taking more room than she had ever planned for. it’s gotten to the point where she no longer bothers sweeping, she can’t see the floor anymore anyway, she’s starting to stack them all atop another.
she puts it in boxes because it’s all she knows how to do, it’s the only thing she thinks she does well. there’s always the bedroom and the kitchen but god knows she’s done trying with him. and the truth is it isn’t all that bad, half the things he says about her are true, how barren and worthless she’s become, but he always ends up being kind, up to a point. so she looks out the window and notices the frame, how it splinters, before she actually ever sees the street. are their boxes as big as hers, she wonders. do they need any boxes at all?