Thursday, December 1, 2011

love is not enough.

it does not solve any problems
just offers new questions
it is not sufficient
because if it was
my first love would not have left
without a trace
and my second love
would be here with me now.

it is not an end
but a beginning
and i have yet to find the end of the road.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

time still passing.

my heart still clenches when i seehearread your name.
even if it's someone else with your name
and the signs aren't even signifying you.
it feels like my heart puts on a wool turtleneck on a NY summers day
and heat can only escape out the top
as steam rises.
overflowing.


i shake it off.


because now you're not the first thing to come to mind
when i fill my Brita
or take the N train
or sleep

i lost the wallet you hated
and my phone stopped working so your angry bird scores
aren't there to remind me
of your superiority.

but i still don't venture farther east on the L train
and i still don't eat mac n cheese
and i still don't know what to say.
i just know that i can't say "you're breaking up" on the phone
whenever static interferes
without my voice mimicking the waves quiver.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

a year ago
on a sunday evening
i was sitting across the bed from you
in the guest room
of my parents house
finding ways to compactly transport my life
back East.

it went something like this:
fold, stuff, sigh, kiss.
we managed to sneak lips
between tending to the empty cavities
left by my shoes.
people who get up and leave are good at
filling the contours with whatever will fit.
mostly the little things
like lingerie.

there was too much baggage to just jump and fly.

your hair was longer, mine was shorter.
there were no twists in strands
or kinks in tow.

i made you put on a red v neck shirt i made
to declare our post (ambivalence)
when really,
i wanted to stay but needed to go.
and you let me.





Friday, October 21, 2011

cast away

next week, i am holding auditions to fill the spot you left.
in search of:
a man who would propose the night before prom
and hit the road two days later.
a man who loves his freedom
to beat his rhythm on the road
and the ones he loves.
a beast in bed and a giant in gentile mannerisms
a solipsistic selfish ego
who would rather stroke himself to sleep
than sacrifice his dreams for love
of anything other than his country.

this man was all you
and none of you, at once
he was all the catharsis and none of the conscious
he was all the action and none of the forethought
he was all the soldier and none of the fighter.

but you were just as lost as he
and i just as lost in you
as she

and you left
to find yourself
or greater
meaning
or something, anything else

and for all of the moves i make on a daily basis
i couldn't choreograph the tide that would pull you towards the horizon
the haze where you would blur into the atmosphere
leaving only fog and perspective
no lines culminating at an origin
no beginnings
just the end.

and


if i asked you, you would say you left for me
to save me
from myself when i was with you.
that it was for the best.

but


somehow when you didn't look back
once you stepped on that train
that would take you away
i knew
i knew that that would be the last time i would see you
that i would interlace my fingers in the small of your back
that i would nuzzle my forehead into your sternum
that you would exhale in my ear
that you would run the backs of your knuckles along my cheekbone
that i would smell your cologne mixed in your sweat
that you would pierce me
with your eyes first and your body later
that your fingers would trace the outline of our trauma on my torso
that you would hold me through the night

i knew

because it was the same look you gave me that night in Barcelona
the day you put me on a bus to Charles de Gaulle
the night you drove your Civic away from the back of French House
the day in the psychologists office
the time you stood in your Santa undies in my loft
when i came home to toothpaste residue where your brush used to be

i got used to you looking at me like you were never going to see me again.
but even that got old
and though i knew, there was nothing i could do.