No. 14.

It's all very strange. Sometimes I love you so hard that I want to throw up. Sometimes I love you so hard that it feels wonderful, tingles all over my body, happiness shot straight through each organ, and that's me loving you even though you're not here anymore. Imagine that. Imagine the joy I feel loving you now, when it doesn't matter, when you aren't around to feel it from me, and imagine how much greater that joy was when you were.

Yet. The absence takes something away. The ache is equal to the joy. Sometimes they exist simultaneously, sometimes one needs to sleep for a little while, and the other is the only one I hear. It is not easy. I am not waiting for anything. It is possible that I may love you for the rest of my life. It is up to me to make peace with that. In the same way one is forced to make peace with their front porch being set on fire each morning, at the same time they have some place to be. Leap, extinguish, take the back door, the window. The day cannot stop.

One-hundred. On Surprises:

I planned too far ahead.
Christmas, your birthday.
However, I didn't make it
to February, and some
might call that a victory.

Every few weeks I would stand in the bathroom
before washing my face
and say I love you
into the mirror. I'm a human being
after all,
and occasionally need the reassurance.

I grew up and that's good,
there's something
about earning the lines beneath your eyes,
at the corners of your mouth,
even in the backs of your hands.
In a picture from when we first became
friends, you look younger too.
We earned a lot in those years
when we sometimes neglected
to treat us as we were separate bodies.

I'm dreaming about whales again.
I'm in the water
but I can't touch them.

No. 13.

Just because the door is open, doesn't mean I have to stay waiting in the room.

Ninety-nine.

If speaking
of things that I deserved:
More goodness
than
    that.

Ninety-eight. For M, on Christmas.

I wear the scarf
your mother gave me
this year.
It is bright blue
and doesn't match my eyes
but something about it
is comforting.
Why I am not going home
to you
I do not understand.

Ninety-seven. A true story that doesn't make for a very good poem.

I was too ill to go to into work
today. In the afternoon,
I drank a cup of coffee and painted
my eyelids cat-black,
and went to buy a new set
of sheets. Funny, how anxious
I made myself worrying
that I would see you in Central,
then at Park, then at the very end
of the green line, and then on the 87 home.
You were not there, of course.
I imagine you were in your fancy
downtown high rise, making charts
or preparing some sort of report or
presentation. I bet your hair was neat
and you looked very serious.
Maybe in your navy dress shirt.
Anyway, I made it home
without occurrence, and moved my bed
to the opposite side of the room,
a side you haven't slept on,
and found a pair of your pants
(brown corduroy), that were somehow left behind
when I gave you back your things.
I threw them away
and the sheets you haven't touched
are holding the mattress in place.

Ninety-six.

It has been seventeen days.
If my cat notices that you are gone,
she does not show it,
but she has taken to sleeping
on your side
of the bed.

I had coffee with a stranger.
It is too soon and he is too cynical,
and unlike you, does not know
how I shape my fingers
to hold a pencil, what colors
I will not wear, what things
make my voice
go soft.

I notice.
I'm sorry that we painted your bedroom
together. That must be hard to look at.
All I had to do was move around
some furniture.
I still love you.

I see my mother in the shape of my face
when I am drunk, when my makeup settles
into the creases underneath my eyes,
when I tire of being a good person,
or whatever this is.

Say I am able to cover my body
in chrysanthemums. Say that I am able
to forget you.

It's not about beauty or fluidity.
It is because of you
that I knew home,
once.

Ninety-five.

Since you left,
I have seen a great blue heron take flight
each day, from the window of the train.
I am still brave, but forgive me,
I could not have anticipated
this space.

Ninety-four.

I was always the one
to quickly grasp the concept of
permanency
and her opposite.

Tonight I will sleep
and tomorrow I will wake
and I will remember
that this has happened.

This has happened.

Ninety-three.

It is July. This means
my thighs stick together
in even the darkest rooms,
I do not want to eat food
above a certain temperature,
and I don't like this
any more than winter, and
I'm always on one side
of the window, of the fence,
of the door, or the other.

At this point
in my life I have memorized
the feather patterns on two
dozen songbird wings,
approximately one hundred and
fifty-four recipes,
and seven city grids.
I have not lived. Enough?
I have not lived enough.

Sure, there is a quiet grace
in miniature houses
with robin egg shutters
and muted fields without wildflowers.
But the two important truths:

1. I am coming back
from the dead.
2. I do not know how to love you
in an interesting way.

And the problem is,
something in my chest
is expanding at an alarming rate,
but it is not expanding
for ___. It's similar
to the way I feel about horses
and courageous women
and my discomfort at the word
"small." Why is it
that I suddenly want
only bold
and galloping things?

No. 12.

You have turned me into a person of science.

No. 11. On failing.

Just because you get what you want, doesn't always mean you get what you want.

No. 10.

Red flag.
Red flags.

Ninety-two.

I am an artist
because
of everything that’s happened to me
and what I’ve chosen
to do with it.

No. 9.

I keep trying to be here, but the problem is, not a single beautiful thing is coming from these hands, these days.

Ninety-one.

I'll come back soon.

Ninety (2).

I can draw a straight line
but I am incapable
of accurately measuring
distance. I should say that I'm sorry
but instead,
"I could never be a cartographer."

Now that we don't live together
I smell like blueberries
and mint.

A plate drops into a kitchen sink
shattering with a sound that is both startling
and satisfying. When will we
do such significant things
to each other?

No. 8.

I need to start seeing myself as something that's blooming.

No. 7.

I don't believe that everything needs a mystical explanation. We're human beings. Sometimes we act like animals.