57, I think I really want to write short stories

How the Plenipotentiary Solved Things

Years later,

I imagine the boys

now as lanky as mostly grown colts

meet,

at college.

You know how these things go. Scholarships. Strong biology programs.

They will haul liquor store boxes

to the dorm room they were assigned to by lottery

(our families, also, we are assigned to by chance).

And after all the mattress pads and whiteboards,

after one family takes home an extra hotplate,

my boys will lie sweaty on their individual beds.

My family pulled me out

of elementary school,

one says.

Me too,

says the other.

I don’t even know.

Something about the gays.

My mom says, says all the time

they look just like everyone else, you know.

( and the other thinks about his own gays, his father’s inability to can tomatoes properly, his other father’s worries about botulism, as they all sit down to marinara sauce. and his own gender,

which others understand as primarily piles of paperwork,

and he understands to be as simple as a poem,

a river.)

Yes,

he says,

they do.

56

You are almost nothing to me now

(A list in blue ink on my dresser

A drawing of birds in flight)

Almost, but not quite.

 

Introduction

I don’t regret anything. You are so beautiful that my tongue goes numb and my knees go all a-quiver and I couldn’t tell if I loved you or if I was having an allergic reaction. The first time I tasted what you had to offer (and here is a short list of things you had to offer: yr skin, which tasted like tangerines, the savory tang of pot smoke in your unwashed hair, chicken curry and naan, too strong green tea, crest toothpaste after your very thorough dental hygiene routine), on top of the pillars at Berkeley ¹ , I thought yes yes yes this is it i have found the thing i have been looking for. Clearly, mistakes were made, but I don’t regret looking across the table and deciding that one, right there, perfect. ²

(I am both surprised and disappointed in the persistence of my desire for you).

And maybe, the most disheartening realization of all: it won’t ever be what we want. It’s sad when you know you could love the fuck outta someone’s stupid shit and they just can’t.

The epicenter of all this disaster can not be traced to a breakdown. Was my head on your shoulder too heavy? Did my mutterings in the mornings about the ice cream truck at the wedding and what did you think about Great Pyreneese puppies and a house in the hills, scare you off? People tell me, while backing away, that I have a gift for unabashed enthusiasm and I wonder sometimes if I was all too too much. When you laid your head on my chest to sleep, could you hear the missed beats of my unstable heart? Did you know right then and there what a disaster I would turn out to be?

The snap of some unknown hips³? Did my fist in the porcelain bowl of your hips feel too much like violence?

Irregardless, you are beautiful. The bat of your butterfly eyelashes slays me, the indulgent lushness of your mouth kills me and I am left breathless, gasping.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYGb_1hL6aE

2. I do regret embarrassing Kim, WHO I STILL LOVE UNGH UNGH WEE LIL SWEATER VESTS.

3. Your own ass is evidence that the divine does not require a god.

54

Wow, I feel like I used to have a lot more friends.

 

For Garrett, Specifically

 

the only thing that is interesting about people,

the fox says,

is their chickens

but you

yes you

 

there is so much interesting about you it comes out in blurts and spurts and you might want to get a band-aid for all that

talent, favorite favorite what I like best about you might be the way you believe in an art form

more than you believe in people at this point because cynicism feels fresh and

slick

between your fingers at this point like midnight sand the time you slept on the Oregon beach on a towel and ran the cold sand through your fingers and counted the decaying stars and didn't want to breathe because it was all so beautiful it hurt

or maybe the thing I like best about you the mostmost interesting thing is the despair

you felt at 4:32 in the darkest morning staring at the bright computer screen wondering why the hell you ever thought you could write a research paper

and how much it costs to get a GED and whether Starbucks was hiring but what I think I like best out of all you

out of the thousand beautifully mismatched self-images strung together like broken Venetian beads on hemp sting is the way you did not try

almost-adult

but succeeded, which are very different things despite what the shitty self-help books in Barnes and Noble tell you and here you are on the precipice

of everything a whooshing rushing whirl like cotton and college and beautiful comforting headaches and buying toilet paper on your own

and nothing all at once, just another summer

yes.

It will be interesting, at least, better than chickens.

 

 

53, I miss that confidence

You are beautiful, you don't deserve me- what happened? I don't ever remember being this sad

 

 

For My Death, Long in Coming

 

Hello

I am sorry to take your motherly hand

You are beautiful, you don't deserve me

Heads like mine are bound to go extinct

 

Yes, soon

Formaldehyde, calla lilies burdening my church's altar

My father's shoulders defeated in the pew

But I want you to know this

 

-when i was eleven i stood in the breathing emerald jungle and hung my toes over the edge. below, a punchbowl of sunreflected blue. i took a deep breath, and jumped.

the water felt like featherlight uppercuts.-

 

It's alright, I understand

For such a life, such colors, such laughing, I owe the universe some marrow

This is payback, only.

52, do you ever feel like an asshole for missing the wrong person?

What is Between You and Me is a Zone for Mishaps

This, right now, is the first time I've been alone

In such a long time

It's quiet. I have too much time to think.

 

I'm still not sure if you were what I needed

I'm not sure if we were built to last

(you and I were never built to last)

I never did tell you how I got this scar

 

I want to lick your wrists and carry your notebooks

and just bewilder people

in that way that true love does

 

I miss you, but I think I miss the future more

51, I wish I was a better writer

The friend who this was written for is a much much better writer than I am.

 

As Nikki

Says Nikki:

This is most likely about an older man, but not in the way that girls usually write for older men. This is also about priests. Assume what you will.

1.

You told me once that the way I trod the world is like the period when you were twenty one, right after your cheating girlfriend dumped you by saying that you were cold and shallow. You spent two weeks after that telling everyone in your general vicinity that you loved and value them, and prayed for the Christian orphans in Rhodesia.

I told you I didn't think you were cold and shallow and you laughed.

2.

I was talking to my mother about that and she said it's a family thing. Our men are priests, our women are brilliant and we all live too close to each other.

(my mother told me she wanted to be a wizard from ages six to twelve, but gave up when she realized that the paperwork for doing magic on Americans is endless. I think this might have something to do with her parents being dead.)

3.

Here would be something beautiful and heartbreaking and true, if this was really Nikki. If this was really Nikki, you would now be rendered jealous as neatly as verbs conjugate into the singular possessive. Really, if this was Nikki your sense of faith&grace would be irreparably changed, same as my heart after I met you, Nikki dear.