faultlines

how can I even begin to describe what you are to me

it’s like the other side of a ventricle

pumping blood into the stream that fuels the heart

to begin I can say art out loud that got removed by circumstance

or golden band who didn’t understand that part or why some things can only be said

minus any words at all

~

I could tell you about the MGA and why it meant so much

or why I said “can we have it?”

it was something only I cared about

and so at 28 you say yes, okay I’m not in love because I’m not but

you feel like something sort of solid and you just won’t go home

it was my fault I know, that sidelong glance and I decided I wanted you

I didn’t care about her, I knew you didn’t love her anyway

~

pretty soon we were a couple & we worked together so escape

became impossible everything I ever was began to dissipate

it was thin air it was thin film it was slightly solid after that first big crash

he just wouldn’t go home & I had no more space I could not breathe

~

years later I tell this to the other half of my heart

he’s a distant force of calm on the other side of a horizon knowing nothing

about himself only what he thinks can’t even see

I’m opening up this box and the ventricle is there, blue spun boy

to match the pink dressed girl in paper dolls

the one who covered her head for church in her grandmother’s cathedrals

little white gloves, little tiny shoes, little tiny eyes

box of boy is sent, box of boys I could never really tell anything to

after awhile you just don’t say anything, because so many hands

have tried to grab on, so many eyes you learn to always shield your own.

~

you’re always going to look like that, the husband says

but he never holds you never kisses you never touches you doesn’t want a baby

Little strains of music are playing as I write this, yours and I think it

must have taken all these years for me to open up a box filled with this much soul that the light pouring off of it comes like sun like lune like lute

so the best I can do is tell you about something I made because it’s long gone now

I haven’t tended to save much of what was really inside or let that pour out as freely

as I know it can, these are only circumstances, locations, men

that attached and demanded

but here’s what it was because those first two were so hard to love

that something in you is a reunion with something in me

it’s a key that fits a certain lock

to a certain door I never let anyone in

maybe we are only thirteen

~

the first love was hard enough to leave but the second hurt so badly it was scorched earth

someday I’ll tell you more about what that camera did.

performance art might have been my forte too had I took that turn or danced enough

all of a sudden I can dance again involuntary modern

listening to you

something is so soothing in the sound even when the drums come in hands brushing and patting rumbling like horse hooves but it’s the tinkle I’m sounding out

that sharp staccato in you

~

So, project 101 is given as all art classes begin another project 101 for crits

school’s long over and you didn’t want to leave everything fun behind

that girl you were once

before he refused to go home ~ anyway you built it

it was a cardboard box that you wrapped and wrapped and wrapped with wads of white cotton batting

inside were red christmas lights

and you wrapped it so it became a womb

it was this white womb glowing pink and maybe you were listening to something while you worked on it over and over and over again

like right now when a piece of music gets into your head and you can’t turn it off

it had the purity of a cloud about it

the clean cloud that pretends

it was like those shoebox worlds we made as kids with everything standing up inside to show a world

like an egg

it became rounder and softer and softer the more I softened the edges

inside it I used cotton balls and q-tips

these represented all the sperm and all the eggs to come in marriage

by then he was more demanding that we should

and he was a good man he never really harmed me

it’s just that for so many years to not be able to have the kind of dialogue

the early years after the house

white eyelet curtains

cooking

hoping

I had so much hope once

it’s just that I wasn’t in love.

got another A on that one

top of the class kind of girl

not the kind that could ever speak

~

for you, tinkling harmony, eyes so still and calm I never looked into anything as beautiful as you

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(starry skies)

 

I read you on her.

❤

always safe between writers like the two of us

❤