We play most of our games in June. Feet pressed against the edges of a salt slot canyon, corn hole, teasing amber smoke across the wet ground of a 1 am rain storm when the sky forgets the concept of loyalty. It calls me on the glance.
Says don’t be afraid of seeing me split. Our first time, I was afraid to open my eyes fully and I think he was too. The moving body often wants to dig through space without knowing its confines.
Light cracks bruised apricot once the eyes unlatch, unfasten upon human lines. To understand that we are whole is a bedroom illusion that shakes only within a salt slanted ceiling.
This is a city of geographical boundaries—ash hazel mountains and snow tops that withhold melting, beg stay in a voice that reminds me of my first boyfriend and why it took so long for me to leave him even though I knew of the time.
Moss is flowerless because it lacks desire, doesn’t want to be held to anything. Yet, roots are the derivations of all wanting, the string with which we can’t help but hold ourselves to another: fingers, smoke, sex, home, the light purple of a bruised back bone.
In this binding, there is a constant reproduction of a capsule of apricot light by which I mean to say that despite the rules of botany, and how low and green the carpet, I loved him before I wanted him and I wish I had told him then, before the summer untangled its moss wrist, opened and begged: look away, I’m splitting.
This is the moment when you leave, it is August again, didn’t the salt freeze in the spring, didn’t your tongue melt into me, weren’t bodies made of scorched mountain tops, burnt lightning beginnings of the first day in June
when you walked across the valley, whiskey valley, moss smell of nine years of circles in which you lift your pen and begin again onto the same orbit.
I remember how we used to think this city was a grid, baked sun lines drawing a charcoal tic-tac board between right neck nook and hips.
I don’t know where the x sits anymore. I remember how the world felt, wine flushed and tight, in glued columns, weren’t the gates unlatched, didn’t we climb the north fence and pour ourselves through windows, into beds.
I no longer feel your body for everyone is feeling, falling over this cherry smashed carpet.
I no longer care what sound want makes,
didn’t this happening end, didn’t the melting salt flood our hip walls, didn’t the city lines blur of consequence.
One of the nice things about wanting is how you never recall the origin.
Wasn’t it the wood carved neck, wasn’t it your father’s room, doesn’t it all come down to dancing and wine, a floor, didn’t you want me in waves, in smoke, small brine currents, freely.
Tell me this is the end, I won’t trust you. Tell me this is a circle, I won’t belief your words, didn’t you want this.
I cant sleep… all I’m doing is tossing and turning in bed… thinking of you… wondering if you’re thinking of me… i feel you aren’t even though i wish you were… i don’t know if ill ever feel okay with that… but you should know… that I am thinking of you… and I really hope, wish, you were thinking of me.
