consolidated free-writing
when things finally start to unwind I'm pretty sure I'll just sit on the floor of my closet and press my fingers into the patterns of all the shirts that have fallen off their hangers
and I'll coil my necklaces into my palms like I did when I was small and tangle them up and worry little bends into the fastenings
and then the song'll change and I won't be alone anymore and I'll hurry for the washcloth and wipe off the lipstick as fast as I can, but it'll stain and it'll stay and none of it will matter
it's always just surface tension, and I can't move off the floor because my fingers are stuck between gingham and paisley and my heart is stuck on elbows and curls and proximity, mouths, fear, proximity
it's always too much, always wrong, always stop stop stop, this isn't right, lâches lâches lâches
and I try to pull from anything else, anything, unused wedding dresses and pearls gathering dust and empty whiskey bottles and homecoming queens and streaks of condensation on the windows and breaking voices and blue eyes and shoulders so thin I could almostjustmaybe feel the bones move if I put my mouth right there
but I keep coming back to paint-stained hands and long grass and bare feet and clock towers
and those old ribbons keep knotting themselves around my heart
he's the only thing that makes it all turn out
something about this time of year gets me feeling all dusty, like I've been traveling for weeks and my shoes are peeling back from their soles and my hair is knotted with foreign wind
I've said it before, how the weather is strange here and the trees here go straight from green to brown and the leaves drop off and drag that hollow rattle down cracked streets and we have to burn them red and orange with our own hands and our own fires
maybe it's the rum sitting thick and stale in the back of my throat, maybe it's the smoke pushing itself into my hair and threads of my clothes, always pushing, always pushing, like the hands of some boy who won't leave
sometimes I say things that I don't mean
sometimes it sounds worse than it is
I don't want to leave home again
he moves like vines on the fences of my life, spindling and lingering and wrapping himself tight, always on the edge where the rain doesn't quite reach and the dragonflies hold still long enough for a picture
his shoulders are bare and his waist is narrow and when the sun catches him, oh when the sun catches him across the face and splits his colors wide open, it catches my breath even harder--my lungs never knew the difference in sun and shade until I knew him
I picture it a thousand ways, hibiscus flowers or heavy books or crosswalks or dirty glasses, imagine the words he'd say and the way he'd laugh and how our knees would brush under the table and we wouldn't pull away but just press, lean, that warmth against warmth that I haven't felt in so long
I make a thousand memories of things that have never happened and catalogue them, fold them up and give them names and tuck them into old yearbooks or souvenir teapots
I fill my heart with these things until it's too big for my chest
then I pull them out and lay them out one-by-one and stick them to the windows that face the fences where he grows
the rain washes them away, the rain that couldn't touch him
but it can't touch my fingerprints on the glass either
and there are two sets of lungs clouding it now, warmth and warmth against cold
lungs that know day and night
three years from now, when I'm older and thinner and my shoulders are a little squarer, I think I'll be with you
you'll pull me across the bed and across your body, slow and deep, like horsehair over violin strings, and I'll fit our hips together and brush my thumbs over your eyelashes and let you count my ribs with your mouth
and I'll remember how I couldn't stop thinking of you that first summer, when the skin was peeling off my hands and you were just another boy with your arms folded across your chest, and how I couldn't remember much, just the way the silk whipped past my ankles and your feet sunk into the earth and I wanted, wanted, quietly wanted
I think I'll still feel it, when your laugh gets all brassy and your hand melts into the curve of my side, that same old aching, quiet want, and I'll make you mine all over again, pull the locket up by the chain and press it against your mouth and kiss you until the shape is branded into your lips
and I'll remember how I was never really thinking of you at all
but you'll smile
and I'll coil my necklaces into my palms like I did when I was small and tangle them up and worry little bends into the fastenings
and then the song'll change and I won't be alone anymore and I'll hurry for the washcloth and wipe off the lipstick as fast as I can, but it'll stain and it'll stay and none of it will matter
it's always just surface tension, and I can't move off the floor because my fingers are stuck between gingham and paisley and my heart is stuck on elbows and curls and proximity, mouths, fear, proximity
it's always too much, always wrong, always stop stop stop, this isn't right, lâches lâches lâches
and I try to pull from anything else, anything, unused wedding dresses and pearls gathering dust and empty whiskey bottles and homecoming queens and streaks of condensation on the windows and breaking voices and blue eyes and shoulders so thin I could almostjustmaybe feel the bones move if I put my mouth right there
but I keep coming back to paint-stained hands and long grass and bare feet and clock towers
and those old ribbons keep knotting themselves around my heart
he's the only thing that makes it all turn out
something about this time of year gets me feeling all dusty, like I've been traveling for weeks and my shoes are peeling back from their soles and my hair is knotted with foreign wind
I've said it before, how the weather is strange here and the trees here go straight from green to brown and the leaves drop off and drag that hollow rattle down cracked streets and we have to burn them red and orange with our own hands and our own fires
maybe it's the rum sitting thick and stale in the back of my throat, maybe it's the smoke pushing itself into my hair and threads of my clothes, always pushing, always pushing, like the hands of some boy who won't leave
sometimes I say things that I don't mean
sometimes it sounds worse than it is
I don't want to leave home again
he moves like vines on the fences of my life, spindling and lingering and wrapping himself tight, always on the edge where the rain doesn't quite reach and the dragonflies hold still long enough for a picture
his shoulders are bare and his waist is narrow and when the sun catches him, oh when the sun catches him across the face and splits his colors wide open, it catches my breath even harder--my lungs never knew the difference in sun and shade until I knew him
I picture it a thousand ways, hibiscus flowers or heavy books or crosswalks or dirty glasses, imagine the words he'd say and the way he'd laugh and how our knees would brush under the table and we wouldn't pull away but just press, lean, that warmth against warmth that I haven't felt in so long
I make a thousand memories of things that have never happened and catalogue them, fold them up and give them names and tuck them into old yearbooks or souvenir teapots
I fill my heart with these things until it's too big for my chest
then I pull them out and lay them out one-by-one and stick them to the windows that face the fences where he grows
the rain washes them away, the rain that couldn't touch him
but it can't touch my fingerprints on the glass either
and there are two sets of lungs clouding it now, warmth and warmth against cold
lungs that know day and night
three years from now, when I'm older and thinner and my shoulders are a little squarer, I think I'll be with you
you'll pull me across the bed and across your body, slow and deep, like horsehair over violin strings, and I'll fit our hips together and brush my thumbs over your eyelashes and let you count my ribs with your mouth
and I'll remember how I couldn't stop thinking of you that first summer, when the skin was peeling off my hands and you were just another boy with your arms folded across your chest, and how I couldn't remember much, just the way the silk whipped past my ankles and your feet sunk into the earth and I wanted, wanted, quietly wanted
I think I'll still feel it, when your laugh gets all brassy and your hand melts into the curve of my side, that same old aching, quiet want, and I'll make you mine all over again, pull the locket up by the chain and press it against your mouth and kiss you until the shape is branded into your lips
and I'll remember how I was never really thinking of you at all
but you'll smile
weird
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