Saturday, August 18, 2012

streaks of red

Tonight I wanted to write the first thing I would tell you, the thing I wanted to say to you the most, after I saw you after all of the small wars that made up the course of two seasons.
I wanted to tell you that there were things I couldn't forget, like the way your face changed the first night we rolled around in a bed that wasn't going to be mine for very long.
Like the way your jacket made me crazy, how I wanted to get my hands lost in the holes in your sleeves, so I could feel the imprints of your name under my rough fingers.
Like the way you reminded me of nothing I ever knew before, but everything I always wanted, and I wanted to know the cold of the metal around your neck, to understand the metal like it were something I could have made with my own hands.
Like the way your body turned in impossible directions, and slivers from your ear came off in my mouth, and I wanted to swallow the shiny things that were part of you, but they were never mine to swallow.
Like how the way you turned and the things that came off were exactly like the way you talked, impossible turns that reminded me of something I wanted to have, or someone I wanted to be.
And I wanted to tell you about the things that happened between a first kiss and the last things I did before I left the house on the day I heard you were leaving again.
And I wanted to tell you about the hundred times I thought about your face whenever the days got too long or the heat got too unbearable, and it's always hot and bright here, but I wanted to tell you about every one of these moments, like they might add up to something important.
The small and humble moments of longing that add up to something that sometimes constitutes a kind of war, something that has to be won in order to walk in the world and make things with my rough hands.
Like how I tried to turn you into a myth, something I could go to whenever I needed something to move my hands across paper, and how it always worked, and always does, and still does, and how it always resolved into something that was not a myth, because it plays out on real bodies in mortal time.
But that rough spleen that gets eaten by buzzards always does grow back, sometimes it happens in a moment, sometimes it's a day, and sometimes it took a month, but it always grew back, and every time it came back it took my breath away because I had forgotten how much I missed it.
And how there was a time when, lying on the floor in a house closer to the sea, I felt the weight of my own body crumbling over my bones, and the faeries that live in my blood asked me to never let that happen again, because the thing in me that wants to forget you was never my friend, and will never be good for my blood.
And there was one moment, one particular moment, when I was speaking through the hook in my lip to the lip of the ocean, and telling her that I'm looking for someone like you, not you, but like you, and the ocean called me a liar, and told me that I had to know that there is no one alive who fits that description but you, and that's how it has to live inside my ribcage.
Not a myth, but something like it, that's how we were and how we are, and we aren't supposed to forget how our flesh turns to water, and we bathe each other when we are speaking to each other through all of our mouths at once.
That thing that lives under the ribs is not a clock at all, because it does not seem to pay any attention to time, or maybe it understands time better than I do, because when I listen to that, time does not pass, it ticks, it beats, the pulse that beats underneath the body that is not yours.
None of this belongs to me, time is not my own invention, and the pulse is not something I will into being at the beginning of the world with a breath or a word, but we were shown what it looks like, the beginning of the world, and that's why I don't stop shaking whenever I have you in my mind and I can sit with my mind for long enough to let it speak to me, and tell me stories.
And it tells me this is the story that I'm in, the one I want to be in, this story I dreamed of, is the story of how I got from here to there and back again, and I don't know how it ends.
And it tells me that this story is older than we are, but it's also much wiser than we are, and seems to know what's better for us than we do.  And if I try to hide from the sun, the moon knows everything I do, and won't let me hide.
She says, I'm like a the rider and I've got your horse's neck between my teeth, and if you follow where I'm taking you, then everything is very simple.  The ones who have escaped the wheel of desire don't know pain, but you already know that you are not that kind of horse, and every time you try to forget, we remind you.
She says, I've got you solid, your bones between my teeth, and you understand that you have to let me ride you, this dark path is filled with shadows you can't trust, and teeth that sparkle in the dark trying to tell you things that aren't true.  At least, they're not true for you.
And she says, I know who you dream about, you're a child of the water, and that same water from your body does not lie, you'll know the truth in words, words you can speak, when you stop lying and just lay down, and let yourself be the horse and not the rider or the liar.  

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