Found Before The Fallow
It's a numbers game. Right now, I'm on, tops, six. Phantom eight. I'm two down but holding on to shadows. I've two in the bag, surely. One and a half. Two halves, two halves, okay. I'm five, phantom seven. Breathe, let go. Call it five. Five. It's all so delicately balanced, so tentative, so unpredictable that you've got to, stack your corner, hope you see out the snow and ice. Hope you're left with more than just what you can get.
Five. Tops. Take Clarissa. Her hand in mine for an awkward moment. Clumsy, uncharacteristic, ill-conceived and yet, somewhere inside that tangled wire of poorly executed affection, a nice idea. A sense of the divide being bridged. At the end of yet another day of tattered blankets and wandering the cold streets for fairy lights and hot wine. It's symbolic, of an actual affection. Yesterday. Every day like this, with her, is precious. Precarious. Every sanguine now is no guarantee of ever again.
Four, maybe. I'd like to think. Five again, for a second there. A message on Tinder, fifteen minutes of back and forth, then the setting back in of the silence. Sometimes I think it's the age. Sometimes it's the distance. So young, so far away. You need to be a particular type of friends to be friends at that kind of remove. I have friends out there, in the world, that count. That matter. Do they count here? If they did... ten, maybe? But, no. If winter started tomorrow, sometimes Skype is a tepid salve.
Four, sure, but which four? Sometimes you have to bank them and hope they appreciate. You find yourself smitten today by yesterday's possibility. When the freeze sets in you only really need one. But it has to be one you'd want. Four? No, no, drop one. Drop one. Two? Could you even call it two? You couldn't, of course you couldn't. You never could, not really.
A warmth too far away to warm. A perfect fit for the summer, for the spring and an unseasonable December solstice. You can't have it all and, in this case, you can't have it at all. This one would do but you both know it's not there.
It's a numbers game. I see it now. It's been a revelation. It's a numbers game I've been playing and once again, I just don't have the numbers.
Five. Tops. Take Clarissa. Her hand in mine for an awkward moment. Clumsy, uncharacteristic, ill-conceived and yet, somewhere inside that tangled wire of poorly executed affection, a nice idea. A sense of the divide being bridged. At the end of yet another day of tattered blankets and wandering the cold streets for fairy lights and hot wine. It's symbolic, of an actual affection. Yesterday. Every day like this, with her, is precious. Precarious. Every sanguine now is no guarantee of ever again.
Four, maybe. I'd like to think. Five again, for a second there. A message on Tinder, fifteen minutes of back and forth, then the setting back in of the silence. Sometimes I think it's the age. Sometimes it's the distance. So young, so far away. You need to be a particular type of friends to be friends at that kind of remove. I have friends out there, in the world, that count. That matter. Do they count here? If they did... ten, maybe? But, no. If winter started tomorrow, sometimes Skype is a tepid salve.
Four, sure, but which four? Sometimes you have to bank them and hope they appreciate. You find yourself smitten today by yesterday's possibility. When the freeze sets in you only really need one. But it has to be one you'd want. Four? No, no, drop one. Drop one. Two? Could you even call it two? You couldn't, of course you couldn't. You never could, not really.
A warmth too far away to warm. A perfect fit for the summer, for the spring and an unseasonable December solstice. You can't have it all and, in this case, you can't have it at all. This one would do but you both know it's not there.
It's a numbers game. I see it now. It's been a revelation. It's a numbers game I've been playing and once again, I just don't have the numbers.