(no subject)
I.
I only feel it when thinking about you: the way you are present, the way you lie with a strong arm angled to hold your head, your eyes watching me as I speak, fingers straying like a mischievous dog-- the way your words move, the way your thoughts. But that soreness of separation, the hollow knock at the back wall of an empty cave-- did that emptiness exist before you came along, or is it something you left on your way in, your way out. You opened a door and now there will always be a second side to a coin I never possessed, always a gust of wind blowing in dark rain. I am the moon, I pull tides to myself, selfishly dragged back from shore.
II.
This is the same feeling I had so many nights staring out the window of this house. Back when I contained myself-- I was a bird and the hand that caught it. My dry mouth, my tongue in its place, a silent tree growing on the side of a road. All the empty nights of my youth: the eye of the needle. That is what I am composed of. Nights and nights and the tail end of nights riding in cars, moving over highways, milling around the dark heart of this town, in the core of my own heart. The place that does not yield what I need. Moving forever in a full circle. That is part of what you took, that is part of what you ventured into-- you don't even know. Your nights were filled, thick to the brim, each seam on every side threatening to split with all you had. You don't know the fear, you never knew the dragging solitude, dust coating the tongue, endless number of days without rain, and all the days with rain, with rain that didn't end.
III.
I had a childhood, I remember it. There was a swing set and red candy that I once accidentally threw out while the wrapper crinkled in my hand. My heart beat in my chest, I never moved very quickly. I drank cartons of orange juice that they don't sell anymore. I had a friend named Nancy. Later I had one named Dee. Rosa. Nina. I walked home alone, the rain made the leaves smell the same way they smell now. There was a television set in a small apartment, and I watched on the floor. This was real.
IV.
Tonight I am holy. My feet are bare and I take from the ground, from the months of walking over bare ground in slowly measured footsteps. Each word was a prayer, each intake of breath was a metered control of God. I know where I must be. I will open my palms, the soles of my feet-- all the holy places of the body. I will sweat until I am cleansed, until the moon reappears in my eyes, until I find the same pace as the girl that I was. Is this going home-- the reconciliation of two bodies that used to live one within the other, each moving separate ways, each body with separate vectors and dreams and goals. Now we are together, cemented, caught. Both of our two forces are applied the same way. The fever has broken.
I only feel it when thinking about you: the way you are present, the way you lie with a strong arm angled to hold your head, your eyes watching me as I speak, fingers straying like a mischievous dog-- the way your words move, the way your thoughts. But that soreness of separation, the hollow knock at the back wall of an empty cave-- did that emptiness exist before you came along, or is it something you left on your way in, your way out. You opened a door and now there will always be a second side to a coin I never possessed, always a gust of wind blowing in dark rain. I am the moon, I pull tides to myself, selfishly dragged back from shore.
II.
This is the same feeling I had so many nights staring out the window of this house. Back when I contained myself-- I was a bird and the hand that caught it. My dry mouth, my tongue in its place, a silent tree growing on the side of a road. All the empty nights of my youth: the eye of the needle. That is what I am composed of. Nights and nights and the tail end of nights riding in cars, moving over highways, milling around the dark heart of this town, in the core of my own heart. The place that does not yield what I need. Moving forever in a full circle. That is part of what you took, that is part of what you ventured into-- you don't even know. Your nights were filled, thick to the brim, each seam on every side threatening to split with all you had. You don't know the fear, you never knew the dragging solitude, dust coating the tongue, endless number of days without rain, and all the days with rain, with rain that didn't end.
III.
I had a childhood, I remember it. There was a swing set and red candy that I once accidentally threw out while the wrapper crinkled in my hand. My heart beat in my chest, I never moved very quickly. I drank cartons of orange juice that they don't sell anymore. I had a friend named Nancy. Later I had one named Dee. Rosa. Nina. I walked home alone, the rain made the leaves smell the same way they smell now. There was a television set in a small apartment, and I watched on the floor. This was real.
IV.
Tonight I am holy. My feet are bare and I take from the ground, from the months of walking over bare ground in slowly measured footsteps. Each word was a prayer, each intake of breath was a metered control of God. I know where I must be. I will open my palms, the soles of my feet-- all the holy places of the body. I will sweat until I am cleansed, until the moon reappears in my eyes, until I find the same pace as the girl that I was. Is this going home-- the reconciliation of two bodies that used to live one within the other, each moving separate ways, each body with separate vectors and dreams and goals. Now we are together, cemented, caught. Both of our two forces are applied the same way. The fever has broken.