shelfpal - Tumblr blog

[shelfpal]

thursday at the owl

There has been music about me made in this room, the walls and ceiling know that you used to love me. I once marveled that you were the only person who didn't see me as small, but now I am no longer small, and I don't remember what it was like to be another way. We're playing musical chairs with our shared neighborhood, living lives in elaborate parallels. I think of you more often than I should. There was never going to be a clean break, though I know you said you wanted one.

Your grandfather (now dead) bought me a book that is still on my bookshelf. Your dad's friend request to me sits unanswered in my Facebook account. I still have that photo booth strip you wrote about in that song, you wanted it gone, but I'm keeping it anyway. There is so much left behind that I don't know how to explain.

There has been music about me made in this room, the walls know that you used to love me, and so do I. There's nothing to be done but stand in it and breathe. I want to pass you at the corner store without a change in my heartbeat, but I haven't ever passed you at the corner store, so maybe I'll never know.

[shelfpal]

grant gore

One time, I watched that statue of Ulysses S. Grant get covered in snow. The town was still quiet, no one knew I was with you. If they had, they'd have known we were in that tiny apartment with the perfect shelf that matched the odd corner where no other furniture fit. I stayed to watch the snow fall, it was a time when no one had jobs. We slept in late and saw the snow-light dance on the ceiling. There was a couch that I cried on before I had the surgery. You once perched on the edge of the bathtub and looked at me with greedy eyes. Grant never lived in Brooklyn. I wondered then what inspired such a tribute, but I built monuments in my heart for you when I hardly even knew your name.

[shelfpal]

it's your birthday month

I wore your necklace to the family function. I didn't think of you much except when my aunt asked where I got it from. I kept it in the first place because it felt like a gift from somebody who really knew me, who saw me as a writer, which I desperately wanted to be. I was a quiet person in the world but to you, I was known and beloved. I kept your necklace, I wear it to this day though now we do not speak. I twirl it on its chain and wonder how you are and what you'd think if you knew I still had it. Probably something incomprehensible, if we're being honest, but also something real, something true, something I would recognize.

[shelfpal]

I loved San Juan Island, the woods and the beaches,

though I realize I can never return.

I would have to see the perfect bed and breakfast

where we slept on your birthday, when

you looked at me that way in the tub,

the shower with the ceiling like rain,

the woven chair where I waited for you.

I would have to see the restaurant where I met your family, hiding

a small, throbbing secret,

that red house where I arrived out of breath

and was weird with your brother on the phone.

there was a bookstore in town where your grandfather begrudgingly included me in the group purchase,

a pier where your cousin took a photo of us that I've never seen.

some things have to be buried

even though they're still alive.

I'll see it on a map someday, trace the path of the ferry from Seattle

and feel the part of me that still wants to go back, after all

just because it was beautiful

[shelfpal]

it's addressed to me

I stopped on the yellow lines of Lefferts Avenue. It was late, no one was coming. I opened my mouth wide, but I didn't know what to say - "I am here!" was an option, because I certainly was, but when had I not been? The feelings I'd felt in that time before certainly proved I had been tortuously, hideously alive. "I am loved by someone new!" came to mind, because it was also true, and I was incredulous I even deserved such a thing, but I stopped again, because I didn't want to shape myself around the fact of someone else. In the end, I just shut my mouth, looked at the moon, tried to take it in before the next car could barrel down the road, before my newfound sense of myself could dwindle into something to put in my pocket for everyday use, before I could forget again.

[shelfpal]

I took on your opinions like a sinking ship takes on water.

I profess them to other people like they're my own,

I can't tell the difference anymore.

One day I'll stop writing in second person.

All that's left is habit, at least that's what I tell myself,

at least that's what's possible.

You don't pay attention to me anymore so I don't know how to act.

I've taken a lover who doesn't know your name,

though he knows all of your favorite music (I've shown it to him).

He touches the body that used to be yours.

People drew on cave walls, then they died,

but we're still left with the walls.

There's something I want to say about grief but I don't know how to feel it anymore.

There's still something to say after all.

[shelfpal]

I'm laughing at the sparrows on the sidewalk,

I'm bringing home a clean winter coat.

I've held my own hand from last October

to this one. To be continued.

The leaves are yellowing,

I'm thinking of a new smile,

a face that isn't yours.

There are things I will never understand,

but I am taking the scarves and hats from the closet,

I am placing them on the shelf to be used.

The birds will fly south again,

ready to return home.

[shelfpal]

it's nearly a year later. I'm introducing someone new to your favorite band.

it didn't hurt when someone else slept at my side, of course  I couldn't help but think of you, but somehow, it didn't make me sad.

I don't know what's going on with you anymore. you did say you wanted to be my friend.

if I fall in love with someone else it doesn't matter so much, or maybe it matters even more, to see if we can follow this through. I'm sick of words and no action, pretense instead of truth, you trying to make me feel better while withholding what you really think.

there's nothing left to say, but I hope we don't have to leave it here.

[shelfpal]

I would have known you anywhere.

I bought a ticket to hear the music, but I kept turning around so I wouldn't lose sight of you,

your features seemed as if they were redrawn in high contrast.

I think I know who you were with. I think she's pretty.

I'm trying not to think about her much.

I don't know what's even left to say, or what's left

to be upset about. We've made our choices.

I don't know if you think about me at all anymore.

I don't know how to turn it off.

[shelfpal]

you brought me to the park to talk. they were everywhere, their little red bodies flush with adolescence, prepared for a plague.

"I can't keep fucking you over," you said, as I squished a body on the pavement. I tried not to cry and succeeded.

you said you had to value the opinions of your friends, who had known you so long (even though, by your admission, they hadn't known me very well). a speckled body darted away from your falling shoe. we took our time, looking at each other as they swarmed, uninhibited.

maybe we never got to talking. maybe we kept killing lanternflies. you might have even kissed me, softly, indistractible. maybe life went on.

[shelfpal]

"you have a misanthropic side," he says, laughing.

I cringe — I got that from you.

I'm suspicious of everyone these days,

including myself.

I looked back on our letters from three years ago,

how we were foaming at the mouth with love.

the reminder has made me a pessimist.

I want someone who challenges me intellectually,

I say with a straight face.

trying to catch up with you was a kind of devotion.

without meaning to, I learned all of your tricks.

[shelfpal]

on the end of the federal state of emergency

when you think the world is ending, you just run toward the love. you go into grocery stores afraid, up to your elbows in rubber, because the person you love is hungry. there’s nothing else to do. you cut makeshift masks out of t-shirts, fasten them with shoelaces. your lover buys a baseball bat and puts it under the bed. what are you willing to die for?

[shelfpal]

there is a door that you never opened. I had opened it, I had made the choice, and I sat on the other side, waiting. sometimes you toyed with knocking, sometimes you even made experimental sounds; I could hear them through the wood and grew hopeful. you were right near the door — surely, what would it mean to grasp the handle, give it a turn, peer in to see me there, eager, sincere? I polished the hinges and waited. you only opened it so that you could tell me goodbye.

[shelfpal]

[shelfpal]

the only good summer

there’s a red paint spot on the corner of empire & in my head, it’s to mark the place where  you wrapped your arms around me waiting for the walk signal,  your five months in Mexico in the still-recent past I came home with blisters from my brand-new boots, wonder wrapped around my chest like a warm blanket

to be with you is to believe impossible, simultaneous truths, what was I to you then, what am I to you now? you put your apartment on facebook marketplace and got on a mid-pandemic plane to brooklyn to sit with me for months in the cold  while we figured out how to know each other again

you send blithe texts about our suddenly-certain future with a smiling face, no doubts in your tone I daydream about a tiny wedding somewhere safe and your bright familiar face at the end of some makeshift aisle, unmistakable I’m still incredulous, but I’m working on it

[shelfpal]

To love someone is firstly to confess: I’m prepared to be devastated by you.

Billy-Ray Belcourt, A History of My Brief Body (via runningfromadream)

[shelfpal]

the obvious

“To love someone is firstly to confess: I'm prepared to be devastated by you.” ― Billy-Ray Belcourt

...

What did I get that I did not ask for?

I prepared to be devastated by you and you devastated me.

Love and risk, like twins, like sisters.

Does it go without saying?

I’d choose it again if I could.