blovedhnds

[blovedhnds]

You are nine the first time it crosses your mind.

You are nothing if not this aching, beach sprawled out before you – who’s touching your heart now? God? He isn’t here. Someone’s got their fingers in your chest. You swallow and your body tightens. Feels them up. Alright, exhale – good, now you twist to the left and catch sight of your side. Good. Keep going.

You can’t think of anything – it’s television static, it’s the pop of your eardrum halfway down the freeway. It’s Summer and soaking wet heat and the endless gnawing of a jaw with a pocket in the bone. It’s a half-cut, half-caught wing and it’s perched along the low slope of your belly when you breathe. Inhale, exhale, inhale.

It’s new. Everything you’ve ever touched will now come away changed.

You’ll have a hand broken by the branch from your childhood tree; the one in your games and kingdom of Heaven that spoke wise words to you and nothing else. No one really knows what to say to this. Some things are better left unsaid because saying them is impossible. Some things don’t come equipped with words to explain them – some things just are. Sometimes people are much the same.

You get dizzy at night, eyes hurting. You should watch a film or read a book or sand down the walls of your mind. Whatever dawns on you. Whatever builds you up. Do you bleed? Do you bleed during sex? Your fingers are up in your chest again. A scar is a hole you can pry open any day. Someone loved me enough to raise hell like that. Someone would sooner beat the devil out of me than that. What’s that got to do with anything?

You are sixteen summers along a great deal of nothing, your path endless and empty. You’re dizzy and nothing sounds like it should. You lean into his side. He blankets you. Tells you to head outside and kiss the ground, so you do. He bends you over. Tells you to look for rabbits, so you do.

He won’t ask you to change, but you will. That man cut a lucky rabbit’s foot so he could taxidermize it just for you. That man loves you in his own way, in his little cabin where nothing happens. That man takes a swig and turns you towards your so-called brother. This boy is a formality and you love him under the blessing of your father’s hand; your father’s knife. You are inside of this boy with what’s left of your frail conscience. 

That man and this boy are yours. You listen to the radio croon and chirp and giggle in time with your drunken steps. There’s nothing else for miles but this. This is your family now – the man and the boy that take turns with you, lifting and twisting you around like you’re weightless. You get smaller like you dreamt of. You’re seventeen. The man that loves you and the boy that loves you and the sky that loves, loves, loves you. Here’s God in the doorway, watching them finger open a hole you didn’t have to cut into your skin for them. It was just always there. You were always there. They call you a late bloomer.

How many summers later can you take of this? You leave all the messages unanswered, letters unopened. You could be in Montana when the wind is warm, but you’re up North upchucking hollow rocks into shallow ponds. The man’s going to sit at the table with an opened bottle of beer. He wishes you could mimic this – wishes it came as easily to you as the leaving did. Why are you up North, Child? You do better under tree lining. You do better when your mouth is wired shut and you scream through your fingertips. You do better when you’re dancing around the subject and then onto it, sinking down, down, down–

The child kisses the earth with the mouth of a sinner and pretends she can’t hear it. The child calls the brother over the phone and the brother cries. The man cries. Everyone is crying now because everyone feels so pitiful. Who are you all performing for? Anyway, you digress. You were drunk last night and you’re more like the man than your father. You couldn’t be perfect if you tried. You couldn’t even try.

The man’s going to drive up here with his large hands and his straight-set chin. The man’s going to remind you that he’s neither father nor God but somewhere in the pocket of the two. Here is North and here is South and here is the man pressing your backside to the dead-end of your future. You sit on his lap and he makes a home out of you – a perfect crevice to slide his notes into. You sing the song that’s etched into you. That’s the way of a Child.

You thought it would hurt to surrender – you called it surrender because there was nothing else to call it. Not everything needs words, Child. The man will hold your stomach in like it’s the heat of his mouth. Here beats the bird wings and here bears the curse of kindness that seeps into our shared blood. Here is Jerusalem and here is the steeple of the burnt church. Here is the intersection between the landing point and the offloading. Here is something tangible; here is love you can touch. You can show a dozen people how to feel up around the sides of your heart, and half as many would do well enough to blend into the backing hum of a low-lit kitchen glow. But there are only two men who can get beneath it – get behind it.

God stands in the doorway. God turns away when he is satisfied. Only now do you learn that humans are hungry creatures.

You tried to leave and came back a fraud. You tried to leave but you’re not one to try. Summer settles at the base of your stomach and you are full. The man and the boy you call your brother kiss you hot and wet on an unforgiven mouth. It’s easier to ignore than the call back to dirt. Time is a mother and she is furious, but earth is a mother and she is soft in her wrath. You are nineteen.

Her name isn’t important. She’s beautiful. That’s what’s important. Can you believe this if you put the entirety of your soul into it? Can you put the entirety of your soul into anything?

‘Entirety’ is a word that doesn’t belong to you, but you steal glimpses; touches in dark rooms. The boy spreads you wide and the man spears straight through – here is your crucifix. Mary is a mother but she has left the room long ago to tend to the garden.

You are twenty-one the next time it crosses your mind.

You live in the crook of a swallow. Nothing comes easily if it comes at all, but heat is a drug and you can mar your face as many times as you’d like with the need for sleep. The man and the boy sit at either side of you – little girl queen.

It’s always been easier here, even if every–

Touch, tear, prayer, meal, fist, burden, barrier, body–

Felt like it was eating you back.

That’s the way of things when you indulge yourself in them. The man takes a swig and the boy puts on another song. Out here there’s just the sunshine through the trees. Out here there’s nothing – just Adam’s love letter to the rib. This is the softness of skin awarded to the wife that holds his body above water. You are free falling; this is not harmful. It’s just the way the world turns. Your mother and father can’t visit here. It’s your treehouse.

The man and the boy find a place big enough to slide inside at the same time. This is the marriage of spirits – all branches of self-governing instinct coming to an agreement. This is peace. Union. Harmony looks like the sliver of skin you can see through the doorway when people you love become people you eat. Your bird bones are hollow because the man drove straight through. Your blood congeals so the boy can nibble at it. Here’s your hymen and here’s your biblical flood. Here’s your strength and here’s your surrender.

Addendum: Here is your salvation. Addendum: Here is your submission. Addendum, crucifix, coda: Here is the whole of you; the hole of you. Here is fulfillment in an empty silence. The man and the boy say I love you. There is nothing else to glean from sincerity. Cunning materials will get this girl nowhere, much to her dismay. Footnote, annotated with citation: To be loved is to suffer the truth of there being no other shoe.

You get dizzy at night. They carry you to bed and slide inside your skin to keep you safe. Here’s your soft release in the sound of prayer.

You were a late bloomer.

[blovedhnds]

PRIMAVERA

It means springtime.

It means you’re going to take him down to the riverbed today; ask for forgiveness.

You were older then. You’re older now. Don’t cover your mouth when he asks you questions – you know how hard-earned some truths are. All battered and bruised, hopeful for something he can’t have. It means catch, it means try again, it means yeah, we’re hungry. Be there in a minute.

It means a lot of things. Right now the riverbed is beneath your feet, all coordinates that span from one end of a roadmap to another. He’s asleep at the wheel. You’re going to kiss him on his temple and his eyes are going to flutter shut again. Nightly medication that drags his body through the dirt and up into the morgue. It’s a slow death, but it’s easy. It’s harder to live with the things you hide.

He says my stomach hurts and you get your fingers up there; clear it out in one fell swoop. He’s all blue-green or hazel eyes when he looks at you. All microscopic twitches of the flesh in the midsummer sun. You could pinpoint him like a dartboard, or a missing person’s bulletin. Red-wire connection and wind-chafed skin and my legs hurt, I want to be carried home. So you do.

You carry him up the stoop of the wooden frame, all frayed edges to the whole world. Every door’s just a dead-end, and when it isn’t, it’s no longer a door. Your bride awaits you on the other side of this stairwell. He’s good and open and empty. Perfect vacancy on the motel exterior. Don’t cry; it doesn’t hurt. You wonder if he even knows what pain is. He bleeds on silk white sheets and keeps smiling. His stomach hurts again and you get your fingers up there again and you clear it out again. Rinse-repeat wounds that look good against the backdrop of – Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Texas. Push your finger down on any point between the green lines of your psyche and pretend there’s a reason for it. God knows the truth. God is in everything – even his stomach. You carved God out last week when you pushed his insides up like you were trying to pull them out. Sex is an exorcism. Here’s your absolution. Your fingers will make him clean.

He takes nine pills and they’re all little and round and white. He takes twelve pills and three of them are shaped like cuticles or half-moons. They’re a murky magenta color and they make him a doll. He likes being a doll. He asks you on a Tuesday in the middle of a baseball game: Do you like dolls? You shrug your shoulders. 

Do you?

Yes. I feel like one – scratched out. Yes, I want to be one – scratched out. No, dolls are for girls and we are not girls – you could make this excuse work if you really wanted to. It’s easy to buy and easier to borrow with no intention of giving back. Steal a few breaths forever and then come back so beautiful and slack-jawed that they fuck an extra bone into your skull. Maybe then you could feel special. Not that it matters, really, because he’s pushing down the hem of his worn denim and giving you a peek into the panty-line of some worn lace that you’d never even dreamt of. Alright, so he’s perfect. You knew that forever ago and you kept at it with the intent of breaking down somewhere farther up the road, like a good make and model with a rotted engine. He’s just not like that anymore. He’s all wrenches and soft hands and boy parts that you can order up over the phone; on a silver platter or in the alleyway. Hell, in the trunk there’s a .45 that whips with the same sort of ease as the handles on the side of his body. He’s perfect. It’s how you sleep at night.

Do you like dolls?

Okay, so you nod. Shake your head. Nod again. Home run and the crowd waves their arms. Home run and the couple next to you have started palming each other under their clothes. Someone blows their cigarette smoke into someone else’s mouth. You’re so young and so stupid that you think this must be why they call it the nosebleeds.

I like you. You sound naive and hopeful, two things you’re (always) going to be for a (long) while. You can forgive this. You can forgive anything, which you will, eventually. It’s not your mistake to make. He’s offering, and you’re just – you’re just the crash test dummy. The hypothesis volcano of his sticky sixth-grade science project. He’s just looking for another way to chip and break his wiggle-loose tooth. There’s a prize at the end of the tunnel when you’re young and volatile.

It just doesn’t work that way. Nothing works that way anymore.

It means springtime. It means too much to put into words.

He says fuck and it means this is the best thing I’ve ever allowed myself to have. You shouldn’t have, but you did. No room for regret in the church pew – just enough to get your knees apart, your head held low, his voice singing through the strands of your unwashed hair…

It’ll get easier, one day. You’ll go to the riverbed and you’ll start the way you planned it: Listen, I’ve done a lot of crap in my life I can’t take back…

Whatever. He’ll roll his eyes like he did when he was sixteen. You know what pushes his buttons so you push them together, tether the sides like anchors to shore. Good things happen to people who are looking in two different directions at once; assess your battlefield like you would the body of a lover. So you did. So you do. It doesn’t feel so violent anymore. He can make something of you that you’ve never been able to parse through, even on the days that drag hot in the Summer with skin-prickling heat. He kisses up the length of your neck and now you know how long it is. He swallows you inch by inch and now you know where the camera lens catches to focus. The decade rolls to an end and he’s still your bride, gap tooth and all. You put a quarter under his pillow the first time he kisses you, and a silver dollar the next time you get your fingers to make that trip up to Omaha. It still hurts, but he never stops smiling. You’re not sure if he ever will.

If nothing else, he’s all soft tummy and flashing lights when you watch the fireworks together. He doesn’t respond to his e-mails and he doesn’t whisper goodnight to anyone else. He just tucks his hands up beneath his bottom and gives you a kitten kiss on your tongue when you look a little troubled. One day the bounty’s going to be hanging over your head. They’ve crucified greater men over lesser things.

Tuesday comes again and so does he. He’s all lithe muscle and six unsent messages and doe-eyes falling asleep in the next ten minutes or so. He needs a breather. He needs something bigger than the whole sky. He has you. Oh, thank God, he has you. You have him too, even if you don’t realize this yet. Right now you’re too busy staring at all the fish in the pond to remember it’s a riverbed – to remember you’re asking for forgiveness, again, which he could deny you simply out of spite.

But he denies you nothing, and you deny him even less. So he forgives, and you forget. It’s just conjecture now, right there at the crossroads where the baby hairs on the nape of his neck stand to attention when you breathe on him just right. It’s a short-lived victory. He’s all yours and there’s no other way to write it. It’s the same story and it’s old, so old, like you were once and will be again. Maybe you poisoned him, but who knows. He’s going to settle into the milkweeds and you’re going to settle in right there with him.

The world’s gonna go by, one day. You’re going to lie there and watch. It’s going to be beautiful. Today is the riverbed, and tomorrow is the sky. The day after is the sun, and Tuesday is for baseball games and dollhouses. All good boy-and-girl things. Two halves of this coin. Mommy and Daddy playing make-believe at the bottom of the basement. He ties the apron like a noose – not for what it means, but for what it can’t. Not now, not ever.

So you wade into the water, make a world for the two of you – pocket it in your jaw, then get fucked open so it can be wired shut. These are the backwoods and their reverse sanctions. Sex is an exhibition match. If you miss home you’re just like the rest of us. Only human. Maybe it’s not such a bad way to be.

[blovedhnds]

The boy you won’t look at is eating like a sweetheart today.

The boy you’ve known since he was kicking at the inside of a stomach is punching down the pockets between his own – here’s the anatomy they can’t put onto paper: Ribs, fists, fingers, dents made between bones and skin.

Here’s an outline; an outlier –

The boy is getting smaller. The boy is going to get as small as it takes to fit into the free seat still left at your table.

You don’t have to serve him, the boy won’t bother you for long –

He’s getting good at this. He’s always been so good at this. Can’t you tell he’s good at this?

You could tell him; you could ask. He wants you to ask. The boy you allow to eat scraps beneath the table has shrunken his stomach enough to make a good sleeve.

For a knife, for your skin, for the secret you can’t tell him –

The boy knows, as all boys do, that he’s going to sit on the floor today and count his popcorn kernels.

Keep him honest. This is all the boy asks for.

He’s going to get healthy. He’s going to get beautiful.

The boy you held hands with on the way to school is going to turn these chipped lips into a perky pink pucker.

Carve a whole out. Every bit of it. The boy’s got nothing left for you if not a gap between the thighs –

He’s been so sweet lately, I swear this to you, the boy’s an angel –

Alright, call his bluff, he’s still wearing your girlfriend’s sweater. She lent it to him last May, belated birthday present, he’s got nothing left if not this aching –

C’mon now, the boy’s got a day to waste away in the sweat of the room. Watch him prance. He’s purchasing a skirt with a five finger discount. There’s the fluorescent bathroom and the boy you can’t make eye contact with at the center of it. More water for him. More, more, more. Flooding his insides and feeling it slosh around when he gets sick.

Your boy realizes in the handicapped stall that he doesn’t feel worse after it all – he feels better. You say you didn’t make him that way, but he’s trying to tuck himself under your arm.

Where’s your boy gone, anyhow? He’s still trying to sit a little lower, to get to her height. She’s not the right size for you. She’s not your boy.

You couldn’t tell him this, but you’ve been noticing it when he stops buttering his toast. You couldn’t tell him this, but you remember the first time he pushed the pie across the table with a cheeky grin. You couldn’t tell him this, but the first time he came home with pink nail polish to show, you could only think about how the color matches the indents on his mangled knuckles.

The boy tucks his hands up his body. He tucks them where they are nothing more than that – just hands. For God sake, they’re just hands. You couldn’t tell him this either, because it’s no longer true. The boy you love is looking for a sliver in your soul to slip into.

The boy you love is the entirety of it. What’s a mirror to the cloth he throws over it at the end of the day? The boy looks into you, and then right past you. He’s going to get healthy. He’s going to get beautiful.

The boy holds his breath. Presses cotton into his flesh like he’s taxidermy. They cut into his stomach, find teddy bear parts. The boy you love has been eating like a sweetheart so much he turned into one.

They call the doctors and the nurses. They call the mothers and their sons to sing from the operating room. He’s going to follow the examples set for him, someone will tell you at the end of a long hall with no exit. What kind of examples does he have at home, to think this is okay?

It’s an implication and a truth – you saw the polish, the sweater and the finger-light dancing on your left thigh. Sixteen kernels. He’s allowing himself sixteen kernels today, as a reward. He fits in your passenger seat and underneath your chair and, on the best of days, at your feet beside the recliner. He tucks himself up under himself – paper crane doll, folded nice and pretty for passing sights to see. He makes a good tourist attraction when you’re pumping gas. You tell him get back in the car but he looks at you like you are seeing him for the first time. As if no one’s ever done that before.

Maybe you never did. You tell the woman in white that you knew, but it ends there. You’ve probably always known. He just – He won’t talk to me. Not unless it’s about something else. It’s never about this.

It’s a lame excuse. He wants you to ask. You don’t know if you have the stomach to. The nurse pats your shoulder. Maybe he understood this. Maybe he was trying to give you his own. Maybe that’s why he has no stomach at all.

The teddy bear boy eats like he’s hollow. It’s too much and it’s gone; it’s too little and it’s right back to where he started. Excited child in a candy store, all wide eyes and busted, saliva-wet lip. In a room where you are all alone, he is with you. He knows how to blend into your shadow so seamlessly that he disappears altogether within it. In a moment where you and God are talking about this boy’s fate, this boy’s future – he’s still there, twiddling his thumbs in plain white paper-thin sheets. Only when you’re done does he gesture for the pudding cup. Today is more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.

No more pockets, you tell him. And no more movie nights.

He hates this, but acknowledges it. Sixteen years and sixteen months. You kiss this boy for the first time when they take all the stuffing out. He’s a real boy now. Like Edward. All cracked porcelain and a desire to love again.

He comes home when he eats like the boy he is. He comes home and he lies across you like you’re a raft and he’s too big to fit into your girlfriend’s sweater, now. She isn’t my girlfriend; she’s just a girl I talked to once.

She was half your size and had twice your strength when it came to looking the other way. She was not good for you, but she convinced you of greater things. Take bigger leaps, make bigger bounds. The world just doesn’t work that way. Now you get it. The boy wishes it worked that way, too. Fit into shoes you’re spilling out of. Anything in the name of the quiet that it leaves behind.

They bury her in lilies in July, all the food at her funeral tasting like the dirt she’s swallowing up. He picks around the plate and for a second he is your sweetheart again, all nimble and long-limbed. His knees knock together beneath the denim, fingers ending in pale pink, but his knuckles are soft red splotches of inner webbing. His teeth remain on the inside of his mouth. There’s no bile to speak of.

He gains another five in August, and a striking ten in September. He tries to sink beneath the waves in March and comes out unscathed by June. Another year under your belt. He’s still your sweetheart, just a little rougher now.

You can push him into the dirt by the time her date rolls around. You put lilies up on the windowsill and watch him take a lap around the lake. His chest puffs out with meat and muscle. God told you once, in a dream or a vision or a half-drunken fantasy, that he was going to get greater than the whole sky.

The boy you hold in your arms is big enough to swallow your shadow right up. On Sundays you sit together in a pew too small to really house the enormity of you, but that’s the way the world really is. It’s not so bad. The sandwiches are cut into halves. There’s three hundred kernels in this bag tonight. He lays them all out in neat little rows of ten, picking them off the hardwood tabletop with baby pink fingers. You fuck a hole he didn’t have to make for you.

Tonight you uncover the mirrors. Tonight is more than yesterday, but less than tomorrow. Tonight you dream of soft teddies and their softer skin underneath. He doesn’t know this, but you patched one up for him when he was only so little. Maybe that’s where it all started. You sewed the tummy up after putting in extra filament. It was all newspaper clippings and packing peanuts. 

He crinkled when he was held. The boy loved him anyway. When you hold him, it is all firm and solid lines. Tonight the boy is your sweetheart. You hope he understands what that really means.

In the morning, when he tastes of stale butter and gentler dreaming, you will fill him with sugar. This will mark twenty. He wears his own sweater, still baby pink, and doesn’t look at the plate you offer him. He just eats.

[blovedhnds]

During Pride month Dad said he'd be "proud" if I got away from the amorphous blob of homosexuality; blanket term. Addendum. IE: Everything, nothing, the in-between and the not-at-all. Like a vacation home or a six month stint spent boozing on the slap-happy sidewalk of Chicago's downtown street web. It's an off-shoot and a one time occurrence. You go back to rehab and people spend more time trying not to talk about it than admitting they're not talking about it.

During Pride month, a man I'd never really known love before the existence of coerced me into a bathroom and made me vomit because it was in his heart to do so. Go figure. Lucky eights and a full flush. Everybody laughed and the rain came pouring down on my arm. It's a hot day in the Summer heat of the South. Your fingers are sticky. I'll never look back at this time with anything but disdain.

During Pride month I pictured Peter-Diane and he was good to me because I made him so. That's how life goes. No one's ever been good to me like that before. But during Pride month you can look in the left eye of a crossing ship and find a wounded solar plexus.

You can nurse it back to health. That's how they get you. That's love when you're a woman. Or the pipe dream of one. You get a babydoll — dress, or porcelain face with cotton body — and they show you how to take it off in a way that implies you're going to breastfeed.

That's Love when you're a woman. Shoulders in but posture straight. Secondary addendum; footnote — you've got to give something if you want to continue having a sorry excuse for a conversation. Anyway, during Pride month it's not about you, so whatever. You just get the good old fashioned note. Do yourself this singular favor and tuck it back beneath the pillow case. Do yourself this high honor and keep it in a shoebox beneath the bed. This one was for you. Here's something you can keep.

Some guy tears open the empty womb of some other guy. This is love in a man's hand. But you're not sick with this kind of disease, so love is tending to that wound. But you know, during the silence of celebration, you could always afford to be more solemn. It makes them proud when you do what they want.

[blovedhnds]

BABYLON

i caught an offending iris to see into someone i once knew it was strange, you were june - and then july, coated in gloss under a lamplight, glowing like a broken wicker basket, quicker teeth have caught on the edges of dreams i had about you but only through a bitten, raw mouth can the words be uttered

there are marks drawn up the lengths of your freckled arms biceps bleeding, blonde hair bleached atop your frightened scalp a soft caress to your brain - kiss the tips of your fingers one by one, drawing claws out of the skin, coaxed through broken knuckle four in a row emerging from the flesh, against the wall - aiming and swinging just to miss by the softest breath

so i say: bring down the guns, the famine, the deceit bring the pestilence, sweep it over my brothers and sisters see the fireworks behind his skull, watch the flies cut holes into his head he's a dreamer, and so he sleeps bring war, let him kiss his hand see the way in which the world falls at his feet

he says: there is no tower of babel and i laugh, and laugh, and laugh

bring together man, reconcile him with god look into the eyes of one another, and touch bodies feel heart, feel muscle, feel fear bore your eyes into the skull until the fly resurrects itself under your careful touch turn a month into a mouth, sing the song of reason bring us back to what we once were

i say, i saw, i place the pieces together with careful discretion i broke his bones in many places i put him back together like porcelain, mending cracks with cement and he grew through them like flowers, like infestation like wounds he let fester to feel their presence

i caught it for a single second as he was brushing his hand against mine it tasted like the first week of august, his lungs collapsing into my chest mortal and quick and without the care put into calloused hand as if he had just been born, as if i had made him from my own rib - it was all we ever knew, and it was warm enough to be all that was worth knowing like fire drug up from the brimstone like the tower we built to highest heaven (now i know that life is comprised of drowning lessons - we are determined to see how long we can hold our breath)

[blovedhnds]

JULIE

JULY WRAPPED ITS ARMS AROUND MY NECK

AND HOISTED ME UP LIKE A CHILD INTO THE SUNLIT AIR, SINGING A SONG

I HAVEN’T HEARD SINCE MY GRANDMOTHER'S KITCHEN

A TIN FULL OF BISCUITS, HER LAUGHTER ABUNDANT -

JULY CARRIED ME TO THE EMPTY AND ASKED ABOUT THE SUMMER

AND I TALKED OF APRIL, OF AUTUMN, OF EVERY OTHER SEASON

JULY DID NOT LOOK ME IN THE EYE AND I THANKED IT FOR ITS GRACE

JULY SHOWED ME A HOLE IN THE ROAD WHERE A RACCOON RESTED ON HIS SIDE

DEAD AND AFRAID, BODY A SILENT MURMUR INTO THE VOID

JULY ASKED ME WHAT I THOUGHT OF SUMMER CAMP AND I SAID I WANTED MY MOTHER TO COME HOME

AND JULY DIDN'T LAUGH LIKE I THOUGHT IT WOULD, SO I TURNED MY HEAD AWAY

AND THE RACCOON'S PAWS STUTTERED AND STIRRED, ORGANS AN OUTSTRETCHED HAND

I ASKED JULY IF IT WERE POSSIBLE TO BE BORN AGAIN AND JULY ASKED ME

IF THAT WAS REALLY WHAT I WANTED TO WASTE MY BREATH ON

I TOOK JULY BY THE HAND, BACK TO MY BED WHERE MY SHEETS WERE CRUMPLED

I LET JULY INSIDE OF ME LIKE A FAMINE, LIKE A HUNGER, LIKE A FOOLISH DECISION MADE BY

SOMEONE WHO HASN'T SEEN AUGUST OR APRIL OR MAY'S FACE SPRAWLED AGAINST THE PILLOWS

TRYING TO WAKE ME BY THE SHOULDERS, TRYING TO CLAW DOWN TO THE BONE

I ASKED JULY TO HELP ME REMEMBER

AND JULY SAID IT WOULD SURELY FORGET -

SO WE STAYED THERE IN THE SUN AND COVERED OURSELVES IN SWEAT

AND LAUGHED UNTIL WE COULD FEEL THE SEAMS ON OUR SIDES COMING LOOSE

JULY BIT A HOLE THROUGH ITS LIP AND BLED ONTO THE CONCRETE

AND THE CLOUDLESS SKY BORE WITNESS TO THE CRIME OF CURDLING TRUST

WHEN JULY PUT ITS FOOT THROUGH THE DOOR, I TOLD MYSELF THAT IT WAS ONLY RATIONAL

THAT JULY COULD STAY FOR AS LONG AS THE FRUIT, AS LONG AS THE LEAVES

THAT JULY WAS A LOVER IN THE WAY ONLY A LOVER COULD BE A KNIFE

AND THAT I SHOULD THINK OF JULY AS NOTHING MORE THAN AUGUST OR APRIL OR MAY'S FACE

BUT JULY HOISTED ME HIGHER ONTO ITS BACK AND TOOK MY SCABBED KNEE DOWN TO THE RIVERBED

AND TOLD ME TO BLOW HARD ENOUGH ON A DANDELION TO MAKE THE WISH I'D BEEN WAITING ON

SINCE I WAS SMALL, HELPLESS, EVERYTHING JULY COULD SEE WITH ITS EYES CLOSED

AND I REALIZED THAT THE CRIME I'D COMMITTED IN JULY'S EYES HAD BEEN ONE OF BIRTH

ONE OF DEATH, OF MORTALITY -

OF EXISTING INSIDE OF JULY, AS I'D LET JULY COME INSIDE OF ME

BUT JULY'S RESENTMENT WAS NOT BORN FROM A MOMENTARY INTERMISSION, OR A CRASHING OF THE TIDE

I WAS BORN INSIDE OF JULY LIKE FIRE BURNING THROUGH THE STICKS

AND THE DOORWAY TO THE EMPTY, TO THE FULL, TO ALL AND NOTHING -

WERE MERE WORDS SAID FOR THE SAKE OF BEING WORDS

UNDER JULY'S HANDS AND EYES, I WAS A MOUTH

AND TO MY JULY, I WAS A LOVER IN THE WAY A LOVER IS A SET OF TEETH

JULY SUCKED THE POISON FROM MY WOUND AND SUNK INTO MY SIDE

LIKE EVE TO ADAM, NIGHT TO DAY

IT FORGAVE ME, IT FORESAW ME

THE STITCHES IN JULY'S UPPER THIGH COMING LOOSE

I TOLD JULY THAT LOVE WAS COMING

AND FORGOT THAT JUNE HAD TOLD ME LOVE WAS ALREADY HERE

[blovedhnds]

sometime in may

your skull is in pieces, like a vase often i think about this, looking at you - should i put you in a jar and poke holes through the lid? to do so or not i'd say it's the question of the century, but truthfully i don't think it's any more difficult than listening to your parents at the bottom of the stairwell arguing about something that isn't you thinking about something that isn't you as if that were ever possible at all

this morning, i touched the perfume on your dresser for the first time. it's been years, it's only been a few days - i've never known you before now, i know you too well - lord knows the vanity mirror only reflects back the things your spirit cannot lord knows where you are, right now, so i guess i envy him, right? i'm supposed to do that, aren't i? he gets to look at your sweet, rounded face - he gets to whisper to you about staying up too late he gets to throw that thin sheet of cotton over your shoulders tell me, do the angels up in heaven - do they put their hands on your cheeks while they wrap up your scarf? we used to talk about them sometimes, when my head lies on the lap of your starched and ironed jeans, we still do. i have as many questions now as i did then, but i am starting to wonder if there's more to it than that. more to you than that. so again, i'll prod - do they cook you meals and keep them warm because they know you have a tendency to run late by half an hour? and when your shoulders start trembling, your fingers twisting atop your thigh - do they grab you by the callouses of your kissed-pink palm and remind you that each bird we see on the highway has their own set of bones? tell me this, tell me this do they love you enough? should i be envious, anguished to know, that i am neither god nor good? they call this another word, they call this a lot of things. i call you by your name, because a different body does not make a different soul and sure, the divine creator of the universe might be able to see your face but your pillow still smells like you and your heart is still lying in the space between our socks in the drawer i still write you letters in the form of stars i still trace constellations, one for each syllable - i still know you better than your mother, this lifetime aside. i cut five of my fingers down to the bone your hand to hold, forever and lord knows, as he always does, that no one else should get to touch what's rightfully yours

i'm going to mail you all of your old things i'm kicking you out of the apartment everyone keeps saying that they want the space you took up - because it's healthy or good or something that sounds more like they just can't think of any good retort to say aside from "i never liked him that much anyway." which, of course, forces my hand to turn them away from our apartment. this is still our apartment, by the way. i'm kicking you out but you will still stand in the restroom while i brush my teeth and laugh in the kitchen while i struggle to cook

they call this whole thing - your new look, this vase within a vase my dinners for two, my heart for two, my rotten sock drawer still for two, in case you were wondering - a word that can only define a period, however brief, of waiting. an idea that only precedes another idea that relies on something more, another redundant cry of the so-called greater - which is, of course, infinitesimal insult to exponential injury. it's all lost on me. this time, this 'in-between' - it doesn't mean a thing. the beloved heart that lies from striped sock to patterned polka dot - job says "the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away." and i twist to my side at night to see the shape of him tapping away at my window pointing to the moon with one of his cherry red fingertips, showing me where man meets with the tide, bodies ricocheting. dust to dust and ash to ash and heart to heart, my chest to your chest. i recognized the scent of your perfume in a four-pack of wax melts this past may. it was last minute, but i gave it to mom for mother's day i carry the part of you that would want to know about that. and some stranger who will never know you took our home our doorway, with our trinkets in a sea glass case - and made it into everything you'd ever wanted. everything you talked about with your son, starry-eyed and laughing. he still wants to give you the world, but we don't talk about it the world would gladly have you back, but we don't talk about it but i saw your face in the photograph i keep on my fridge last weekend and thought that writing your name in silence will only leave it to build up at the back of my mouth. i think you'd love it here if you tried the old house, our apartment, the way i tie my tongue in a knot to avoid the inevitable reality that your name now exists only to serve the purpose of painting a vague, impossible picture of you - i think you would find some beauty in it somewhere. the kind you know i sit down at night and try to write about. the kind you know i lay my head in your lap over, struggling to see it with my own eyes. even in your sleep, job says - "blessed be the name of the Lord." i think the silliest thing mankind ever did was try to put such complicated words to the simple act of love.

[blovedhnds]

8.14

it's monday morning, television going there's streaks of purple, green - grapes, berries, fruit of the labor or fruit of the lamb, fruit of the garden of eden a shock ricocheting down my spine like magic like a child playing spoons against the brittle bones of a wooden table. i'm nine again, in music class the deaf kids put their fingers against the vibration of the xylophone gently, gentler than before i hit notes that are discordant, no one cares - i learn the numbers 1, 5, 9 everything in between, but my favorite is zero - the nothing, the everything, the thing that exists when the word "existence" is sounded out it's a simple clamp of my fist, a simple curl of my fingers i keep this motion buried in my mind. i match it with the singular finger for 'one' like a plug to a socket. that's where my mind goes - four and stuffing forks too close. wishing for something and being haunted by the wish are both the same thing, in the end. i pen it down i hit the keys i double back, double glance, smudged writing left-handed chicken scratch, my dog at my lap how close is too close? how perfect is flawless? unbearably so, i get closer to a greater idea of god but never enough to discern at what point the haunting, intrusive visions are a hand held out or a fist creating zeroes and ones. you see, i say to my friend, the thing is that i'm lonely, so lonely. but my loneliness is as much my own fault as anyone else's. you see, my friend agrees with me. because she does not know i wish for her to disagree. oh please, i say to another friend, won't you dig your hands inside and carve out a proper space for yourself? she says, this is your body come to me with it when you're ready to split it into halves, or thirds, or quarters. i say to her, i come to you with it in puzzle pieces i say to her, i come to you hoping you'll piece it back together. there's no shortage of hands only a shortage of interest, of fingers curling, of fists clamping down. you see, god created great men or men who created a term like 'great' it gets old, i tell my father trying to be someone to someone gets old because everything is nothing and nothing is the zero, again - what does any of that mean? my father asks me. i can't reply, can't complain can't do much of anything that isn't already something else. recreation is creation is redundant whatever, whatever it is - no matter how you tilt your head the light will catch on a strand of your unwashed hair. see, that's the reality of things. you want to be loved, so you make yourself smaller. you want to be seen in order to be loved, so you make yourself bigger. you drink your drink, you chew your food - you go back and forth between things being swallowed down and things being spat up. sometimes it's words. they say you get lucky if it's only words. it's almost five in the morning the television is greens and yellows birds singing the hymn of the lord, the lullaby of the heavens i look at these free creatures, innocent and frail i say to myself, this is how i look in mirrors that are cast in the glow of the sunlight i say to myself, a compact can't capture the enormity of a human of human desire i say, 'enormity' is a word designed to dehumanize how it feels to long for love but really, i'm not saying anything that hasn't already been said or done before, in much greater ways you see, the thing is, god creates men in halves, in thirds, in quarters who crawl about the earth with their necks bent and their hands calloused you see, god makes men to love and be loved. i don't think it applies to all men, a friend says my father says the lord says. it gets old, i repeat there is a shortage of lovers and i - i get old.

[blovedhnds]

finally i make it to this hellsite LETS GO