industrialfirefly

One morning, you walked out to the horizon. I traced the blurry edges of your profile but the sun blinded me and the tears made it harder for me to focus. I remember gathering everything you had given me in a package. I thrusted it under your arm and insisted you take it - I imagined carrying something like it to make it hard, slow, for anyone to move. Alas, a box of unrealized possibilities did not bear as much weight. You strode away with your usual swagger, and bled into the sunrise as quickly as you had come. (31 November 2009)

This is how you conquer: a small splash of words unbuttons your blouse then you spread yourself on an easel— before a bald paint brush. Each fiber of your canvas catches every stroke, em- beds every line. You thresh out your pain not with moans but with gasps. Look closely: you have painted a gun around the hollow between your thighs.

This happens when someone like you bumps into me but this much we know already. Is it small talk, suddenly I wonder, to talk about things like how you prefer soccer over basketball because you love the feeling you get when you run across an open field; and how I think I am getting nowhere, so you ask me to let you teach me the sport, since it is as simple as you say. I tell you about how I scurried to a DJ booth one night demanding that he repeat a track and I spent half that night looking through an album of CDs just to find out the title of that song that, as it would turn out you and I both love: "Build

1 As if an earnest professor whose excited words just eddy in the earlobes of his one and only student (freshman), you lecture me about looking up to see for myself the wonders of the zodiac: those flickering dots with which to play an ancient game of connecting them into a belt, creatures, heroes, lovers. A busy sidewalk café is where we always hold class.  You drink your macchiato with long, slow sips in between sessions that never went passed the silly name-game and the explanation of the syllabus. 2 Tonight, the practical test. I haven’t any idea of the grading scheme but I try my best; suck up anyway.  H