I want to dissolve into our bed and into you
blend into the fibres, into your pores,
particles flush with particles in the dark.
No more of this —
operating a metal machine to
move my body where it doesn’t want to be, to
carve a life out of busywork.
The planet is dying, and the lifetime
you and I roughly share isn’t guaranteed
to say nothing of our smallness
within our planet’s smallness
within our solar system’s smallness.
What I mean is,
I no longer have the capacity to think about my credit score.
The universe experiencing itself experiences
lunch n learns, the DMV, conferences, car trouble.
And how quickly I forget, how chronically,
that I am here and your are here in bed
and no one attempts to steal our labour away
all night.
I am here, and you are here.
What fragile, abused creatures we all are.
I am here, and you are here.
If the sun comes up tomorrow, I will try
to remember that.
Tag: love poem
My Hand of Cards
I thought about how to write
down the feeling of my lungs
held up in clouds or my heart
melted down into a shapeless mess, when —
all at once I knew you —
and knew you were
moving in the same timeline,
on the same planet
in the same city
in such a way
making enough noise so that I
could find you.
All at once, we are not the sum of our
miraculous parts, immaculate parts…
(wet parts, hard parts, warm parts, soft parts)
even when we are apart,
even when we go to pieces
and those pieces social distance and self-isolate.
We make,
or made, something good
when we swiped right or when I climbed
into your truck or when you kissed me —
whenever you want to call it —
In that moment, I’m sure a star was
born, and a chicken hatched, and
twelve million new discoveries were made
and a flame was lit, and a seed planted, and
a song conceptualized in a brain —
and you and I, all emerged from some
same magic.
What I’m trying to say is it’s bigger than me
and nothing was before.
slept with
You sleep different.
Some others, hidden away under miles of sheets,
inside the duvet cover, even —
buttoned or zipped up tight
while I, folding and tossing about,
frantically search
another sheet, another pillowcase.
A body lost in layers with no heat to spare.
Still others, sleep-talkers and -walkers.
A mumble, a shout in the night
means that much more —
shakes a house apart.
Any step in dark stillness seems its own radical act
and I listened, I watched, always.
Awake. Tired.
You do two things:
You drift off after saying your piece,
still, you say it
I weigh it, and you hear me mumble back
some sleepy pleasant thought
lost by morning, but I remember the feeling.
And,
you hold me and I hold you.
Even off in a dream not about you
and you, in a dream not about me —
mutually found
warm in a cold room.
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