Exquisite Corpse (Minty Man to Squirtle) 24.12.023

Six summers ago
high as a kite, likely,
I tried to capture a blue turtle.
I do not remember if I succeeded,
but there you were—and for the same reason—
and we met, finally, in person.
I forget a lot—
and I cannot tell if it is by
intelligent design
or my own doing—
but I will never forget your smile,
the mischief in your eyes, that insistence.

Later that day, you came by—and in—my place.
My right eye: red and swollen as you bade me goodbye.
I wanted to call you Squirtle.
I did not (good choice).

Later, a year or more, I called you “cortadito.”
On your birthday. In writing.
That was a mistake—one of many, too many.

I still love you; it will not stop.
And sometimes, through the loss,
I am still so grateful for the gift of feeling.

Ten whole years after
your magnum opus of love found—and now lost—
I, too, can still only count on one hand
the number of times I’ve fallen and not been heard.
Yours still has my heartstrings singing;
Earth-signs, you and I:

Virgo-snake to your Taurus-dragon—
bull horns and a well-endowed virgin.
The pun is lost in seeming contradiction
No benediction left in your diction,
or in the lack thereof:
Silence killing what might have been love.
Stubborn as a Bull (do you feel lost, now?)
perfect as a Virgin, outside and in;
venomous as a Scorpion.

(And I do not know the rest of you)

Sorry to say, but you never found a clover
four-leaves-number’d.
You found a rarity, nevertheless.
Juicy, piquant edible—
wood sorrel, sweet-tart four-hearts Oxalis:
Yours; He who made you honest;
Mine (pale-moonlight memories);
and the One whom comes After.
You greedily devoured them all.
You called it luck.

In so many words:
I did too.

I too felt fireworks—
on the Eve of the New Year;
the most fortuitous and best-spent one yet;
and yet

So many new years have passed since Then.
And I am stuck Here.
Still stuck on You.

I’ve tried and tried to figure out why
I can write nothing Happy,
why
it all comes out as a lament or a sigh

or why
numbers, though useful,
oftentimes lie

and why, despite this, we tend

to lend

them such credence,
why we still measure with trust
instead

of trusting in our heartstrings,
timekeeping
intercalated discs
translating signals chemoelectric
into waveform movements;
disparate cells
thund’ring in seeming unison

to propel us towards
a homeostatic,
interoceptive co-regulation
of our limbic systems;
vaso-vagal interdependence—

the Lightning within sparking stores
of internal warmth and a
shared existence, leading
from stunn’d silence—
electrocution—
to comfort, home, to
absolution.

I want to share.
I don’t know where I can take you,
except to the places within.
Please draw the blinds to let the light in.
I don’t care
if you gave half to Him.

Here I am.
I am.
I am.