Sixty-nine.

And I said, "You shouldn't write fiction.
I don't feel anything." It isn't always about lovers,
it isn't always speaking to someone inside the room.
So, how well do you think you know me?
I say this to wallpaper. Dusty blue damask.

He gives you a book of poems
that he has written within the last six months.
You read them late in the afternoon. They might
as well be titled, "You Are Not The One,"
or "I Remember Everyone But You Even Though
You're The Only Set Of Hands Still Here."
Well, fuck. What are you supposed to do
with that?

I work so goddamn hard to build a life away
from you. You don't want this but someday you'll be dead
and I'm going to need something to fill the space.
Besides, I sleep in your bed, give you home,
kiss your forehead when you're sad. You don't love me,
so what more do you want?

Again, to the wallpaper.

It's like listening to a song
with the most beautiful chord progression
that's ever dug its way into your eardrums, but
the only lyrics are, "Wake up!" over and over.

Sometimes I don't know where I am.

Sixty-eight.

Eventually even the name becomes painful to roll around in your mouth. Tiny slivers driving themselves into your tongue. A character in a movie shares it, those horrible syllables, and you cringe, spit up blood on the sidewalk.

At stoplights, he doesn't touch you like he used to. Red, and he would turn to kiss you, or dive his fingers into your hair. Sometimes they're the same ones, a fleeting deja vu. At the intersection of Islington and Bartlett, he doesn't even look at you.

Hair sticks to the side of your face and you begin to mouth the letter L. The light turns green, and it is too late. One-point-five minutes later and he parallel parks smoothly in front of his house, an action requiring hands and judgment, which you have always found to be attractive, as you are often lacking one or the other.

2am, bed, and you both fail to say "goodnight."

Sixty-seven. Translations.

Everyone likes the stories about joy
because that's what we all want.
You can only read so much about being
heartsick before it wears you out.
It's human to want the happy ending.
The coffee in bed, the white dress
grazing against the sand.

I haven't even gotten to kiss you
in the rain yet, or under a bridge,
or with our ankles in the ocean.
Nobody can say that I didn't give
my best effort, not even you,
but certain battles aren't meant to be
solitary, and distance is distance,
no matter what language it's in.

Sixty-six.

I was born with wide eyes and legs that ache
in the middle of the night, legs made to run wildly
through the forest. So yes, I understand
why you see me as an animal, why you're always grasping
for a net, even though your fingers had gone numb
from a long time ago. You write about me
in languages that I can't read, in a tone that's either
a blessing or a prayer. An affirmation or a question.
I'm sorry, I wake up sick more often than not.

Sixty-five. On the subject of illumination.

It is often difficult to see moments reconstructed and replayed
in another person's words. Your voice translated into text,
clean and precise, without any sort of stumbling or mispronunciation,
which means that whatever has been written is already
a half-lie, which probably creates a perfectly sensible balance,
as every line that falls out of your throat is only half-truth.
What the other half is? Well, we're not far enough along in the story
to be able to tell yet. Once upon a time, a boy met a girl
and he named her home. Are you seeing a theme here?
Can you sense the loss? She had a name for him but she never said it
out loud. He used words like delicious and drunk,
and it carried them through the winter all right, but when summer came
her hands stayed empty. It wasn't what anybody wanted,
it was barely worth keeping on the tongue. Sometimes
you see so much brightness in a person, you can't look away.
It's like looking at the sun, it isn't any sort of good for you
and just because you feel it all over your skin, doesn't mean it's yours.

Sixty-four.

So you searched and searched
and then found the thing that you decided
was warm enough and kind enough
and right-fitting enough to be called

home.

Tell me then,
why you would go.

Sixty-three.

There are questions
that I don't want to answer.
I wish for things, all the time.
Mostly for undiscovered continents,
a warm body to come home to.
I don't know what sort of finale
you're expecting. Rockets, fireworks,
one last passionate kiss in the stairway.
It was me that wanted the flash of light
and secret messages or really anything at all
that would indicate, "You are not in this
by yourself." Like I said,
I wish for things. It's not as if
I'm the first person to ever stand
in front of the bathroom mirror in a panic.
"You're welcome to sleep over
and there are eggs in the refrigerator."
It was the same answer every time.