My head spins and the world shifts.
And there is nothing but wrinkled sheets and bare feet and the aftermath of long quiet afternoons.
Only now there are cats crying. Plumbing problems. Interventions (of all sort).
I've started losing my accent and using punctuation. Ignoring the constant longing for small letters. Things left unsaid. When I was so in love with you you were a window that I always opened and closed. Found at the ends of my fingertips. When I wanted. It's how things go. Now you are here and there and the cat cries and eats and wants to come in and go out and we are closing all the windows up tight, on the house. I can see my breath, sometimes, in the early mornings. When you are real and I am too.
i'm looking for the ins and outs. the ways that words used to feel streaming and alive from my fingertips. this might be the end of them. for days. and days. and days. of waiting. the doldrums. the fantastical ways that the days can. really. end up being the rhythm that you were looking for to begin with when you first started this whole thing. all that fucking stuff that you can't even see now. for looking.
oh my god
he says
and she says
nothing
rolls her eyes in the way that annoying teenagers do in movies and in real life when they know that someone is watching.
it's a real important question
she protests
about something that probably doesn't matter anyway
it's like trying to swallow my own tongue. thoughts of the memory of your hair ring my insides dumb. like an unstruck bell. and if i could, reduce the life we lead into pocket-sized picture postcards. i would. shrink you into something more manageable. less loud. and i could fill us up with nonsense words. mail them off to foreign lovers. and strangers.
cherry bowls and nightmare hummingbird kitchens and radiator death cab rides.
