22.06.018 Tangential Portals

He went to every place they had been together, hoping to find the crossing into that other universe. Looking for signs, patterns, repetition, hoping in his heart of hearts that that the portal, the means of crossing to the other side of the brook, would be there. For a short while, the wound between universes had appeared to be in a spot-- hovering, a slow pulsation-- a short distance above his bed. The vision soon faded, eroded by too much moonlight.

The ducks in the toxic water gave him no direction. No point of access in the mirrored surface, wreathed in the scent of warm wildflowers, nor did the drone of cicadas give way to a thin veil of static to be drawn aside. The Thai restaurant required a reservation, and so he could not get inside for some time.

When he did, he ordered his food, same as the first time, looking around the bar as he did so. Nothing. It occurred to him that the three drinks might be the key-- and though he'd transitioned into sobriety at this point, he tried anyway-- alas. All he had left was the coffee shop, which didn't seem as promising, and the back-yard tiny house rental. The loft bed. Feet on the wooden ceiling (oh, you've got the darkest eyes); but he dared not break in.

Spacetime was his prison. That old feeling of paralysis.

18.11.017 Commitment

He says most of your pictures were taken on a plane;
each flight enough radiation to amount to a cranial x-ray.
I wrote to you once, as God scanned my head:
I think of you while I’m in the sky.
Only He has seen inside.

My fingers quake with dopamine.
I have only one means to reach across the gap;
drained now of strength, they once pushed and pulled
til it widened—it will stay that way.
Jittery taps on light-screens,
glass crack’d, must suffice.

I beg for pictures of your cat,
morose and desperate sop that I am.
We are such adults with our pleasantries.
We have learned resignation so well;
you look forward to the lock of your cage—
the hinges having no need for oil.

You once reached through the bars
(no need then, gate still wide-open);
stuck your dick through in earnest,
spoke such wistful lusty words.
Mine imagining of your barred breath
as you whispered not to let the Keeper hear:
soft, delicate, almost a kiss.

You already had such sad, soulful eyes when first we met.
I suppose iron is a sort of security,
the regular meals and Doctor’s care
a trade-off for the gazes of regulars and strangers alike:

observing your majesty from a safe distance
as your bowed back grows ever more silver,
removed from the nature of your birth—

nothing truly changing,
surroundings a static, fiberglass façade—

only waiting.
Just waiting.

Into the void, again 22.10.017

Hey, I hope all’s well. It’s late and I can’t sleep. I’m a little embarrassed about thinking you were going into environmental law, not geology—it’s a false narrative I think I created early on, and it stuck— but at least it’s kind of ironically funny, given that I’d talked about not being able to trust my memory. I’d had this moment of peace and benediction and what I thought was clarity, and had to write it down. Ah, well. I hope school’s treating you nicely.

[Delivered]

01.08.017

Gloam Over New Lovegrove

The man climbs into the bath
Steam rising in eddies and plumes
At the conjunct of skin and hot water;
Whorls of hair in languid streamline---
Mind wandering to Barbara Kingsolver,
From pig to ape to man:
Like fingers of a hand; limbs to branches---
emanant seaborne web.

21.09.017

Considering sending reparative texts
Realizing they may knock the keystone loose
Thinking about the apocalypse:
How crazy would I get?

Solemn hymns humming through my head
Swarming phonemes syllabic cacophony
Screeching bells pealing god-damnit god-damnit
I'm tired, I'm trying.

08.11.016

As a child, I'd have commanded the wind-- a force unseen, yet powerful all the same.

I far preferred hiding to seeking.
Slept under my bed. Read in the closet.

I spent hours in trees, away from the world, though able to observe largely unseen, anyways.

I was a mermaid; I held my breath as long as I could, slopped water on the floor-- reverberations of ululations on tiled walls my own captive, chamber-echoed ocean hush.

13.09.017

The fire of the Earth burns in your eyes,
A deep, smoldering brown.
Hurt, too, is shut away behind the fire, though it bleeds out all the same,
Encountering nothing from me but oblivion.
I am so stupid and thick to recoil, neither flame nor pain seen without Time's passing.

I am a star, burning cold in the great vacuum of space.
The warmth of your terra firma reaches me too late;
The spectrum of my response, celestial coronal flares— mass ejections—
Is a window to your past.

Onward. We pine for distant heavenly bodies,
Forever immersed in our own nebulae.
The comets have such a space to cross.
Such coldness, forgetfulness.