Saudade

Midnight. Two hours ago is when I planned to go to sleep. My heart is pounding though and keeping me from it. From sugar. Two pieces of left over birthday cake. But for romance's sake we can leave that out maybe. Ah romance. Something I've lost a good deal of. I'm rebounding. I've dipped so heavily into that pool and have retracted so far from it. But in both extremes, I lose myself. My balance of encompassing them both.

It's funny- I often read over past writings of mine and think- Fuck, that was so good! That's so clearly expressed and pure. And what I've gotten since then is a good beating. A good dose of reality and experience that has eroded my rough edges smooth. And who has time for poetry and words to play with then there's a car to register and rent to pay and an article to write?

My mind hops around frantically- looking for something that will catch its attention. My attention so unrooted and free-floating. Reeling in outer space after having detached from the gravitational field of my love. Funny that term, "my love". The love being truly mine. And how true. Thinking back, hearing his voice or reading something he wrote to me, he is objectively unremarkable. And certainly embodies very few of the qualities that I would list as being things I seek out. Values we share. Yet, with all of my heart, I adored him. Maybe just because he let me and so few do. And that feeling- that- that is a feeling unlike any other.

For every electron in my body, normally stretching and pulling me in multiple directions at once, to stop. Align. And all move together in one. I had found direction, a purpose, and it took me off into the woods on a path I didn't expect. And ran me eventually into a brick wall over and over again until, through sheer will, I stepped back, looked up at the stars and wandered off into the darkness in hope of once again finding light.

I want something. So badly I yearn, I long, I grieve for something. But I have no idea what. Finding a treasure trove, I'm convinced, in which one is stocked with enough mystery to last a lifetime. Little pockets of unknown that can be unwrapped and discovered, a source to which any yearning can be attributed and thought to be tangible, is the key. To delude oneself, to mask oneself in a dillusion so grand and beautiful that incompletion becomes romance and failure becomes an art. A world in which every stroke plays into a picture, messy up close but grand from far away. That's the picture I want to paint. The bridge I want to look at.

In the face of the massive expanse of this crazy crazy world, every longing looks silly and every concern and excitement, insignificant and petty. So, in the name of beauty, in the name of romance, for god's sake, make your world a litte smaller. Put blinders on yoursef so, like a horse, you can rule out fear and keep onward.

The biggest heartbreak, the biggest source of emptiness and frustration, is not knowing what to long for. The longing will always be there. My longing however has no direction. I'm turning in circles trying to find a worthy cause, a green light, disoriented without it. Installing tangibles just to give myself a north star. Reeling and wallowing in my completion, desiring desire itself.

Here's the bottom line. You find meaning, everyone does, I certainly do, through love. Through lov-ing, the act of it. So never, at any turn, deprive yourself.

Time Bomb

I remember the first week we spent together. You dropped me off back at my house after and I remember walking up the stairs, returning to something without you, after having found you, and I felt, walking away, very distincty feeling like the root system, the pulp, had been pulled out from my form, leaving just the shell. The marrow had been pulled from my bones.

When I met you, over that first week or two we spent together, all the pieces came together in a way that made sense to me. My world glowed with life, I could see the stars during the day and the sun shone at night. My life had found a meaning so unbelievaby fulfilling and so effortlessly simple.

I'm still not sure what happend. I melted is the best way I can describe it. I fell to pieces and fell apart. Something which I still haven't recovered from fully. I'm fragmented. I can't quite see the things around me, as if, without you, without my vision imbued with that love I found for you, things are no longer worth seeing.

The strange thing is that I don't miss you. I don't want to go back, I don't want to share a bed with you, I don't miss your kiss. Although I remember the fullness of it so distinctly. With such relinquish and devotion you kissed me- like you were handing your soul and your spirit and your purpose over to me. Houdini's kiss-passed key, you treated me to life over and over. And I wanted it. So badly. I wanted to make a life with you. I wanted to make life with you. And you handed it all over to me so readily. I guess I couldn't hold it. I wasn't strong enough. And I fell apart under the weight of it. Maybe I didn't know how heavy it would be. Exactly what I was giving you permission to do.

It was never a matter of love. My love was never a question. I loved and still do love, absolutely every piece of you. I loved you with a mix of utter and unconditional adoration, comfort, desire and completion. You had held all of my softest parts. You completed and supported parts of me that I didn't even know were there. You introduced me to a love I never knew was possible, one I had longed for and seen in the distance but didn't know it was possible to attain. To be fully engulfed in. To swim in for months on end.

And now returning alone, my darling, I never thought I would be returning alone. My sweetheart. That word even is indelibly connected to you. How could I call you anything but? And doing so- returning alone- is like coming back to a shadow world.

This is all right. It's all the best and it's good to be here now and here alone, to be coming back around and painting color again between the outlines. Our timebomb expired, leaving nothing to return to. Life just breaks your heart in these ways, lessons coming in such compelling wrapping, interlaced with such beauty. It's time to move forward, and I'm happy to do so. But it will take someone big, my sweetheart, to fill your lovely shoes.

A Thread Runs Through

I just talked to an old boyfriend. The first boy I can say I really loved. Being reminded and looking back, my god I was so open then. So available. Now I have thick crunchy walls. Scabbed up skin that even I have to fight through. Interactions with others are far from connection, they're about survival. Even those I'm close to. Although distance is relative and my close friends, as close as they've ever been, now feel far away. As my cravings grow, my need for skin against me and another mind besides mine makes anything outside my skin feel far away. I can't always heat this body alone. Sometimes, and more often lately, it takes two of us, both your blood and mine. Spoken like this, like flashes of a dream, it comes back to me- how it felt to be then. Only a few years ago. But that's now, in this darkness, safe and alone. When the sun rises and there's light to create shadows again, I lose that recognition and become again, a stranger to myself. I'm terrified- terrified- of having lost that person. Who was able to love so purely, so simply.

Yet today, I unexpectedly ran into a man I knew two years ago who made me act like a fool and beat the steering wheel while driving alone. And in some ways, in my desire for him, I am the same. At least a thread runs through.

And when I step out of the shower, I dry myself off every time in the same way that I always have. I dry my face, then my shoulders and arms, chest and stomach, then I toss my hair in front of me to dry my back, dry each leg as I step out of the shower and then wrap my hair in the towel. And I will always do that exactly. Because it works and I've never had to think about it. It's just the way I move.

Tapping into the Love Cloud

My stomach flutters and holds its breath. I'm desperately in love. And you're the pretty face to which I attribute all I want to see. We don't like it when we can't put a name or face to something which is so obviously there in every inch of ourselves. So I'll do so and limit my view of the abyss to within your presence.
My body rocks and throbs with love and lust and I attribute it to your hair and eyes and stupid smile. And giving it a name and face, I delude myself into thinking that by being next to you, by being inside of you, I'm there. I am fully in tune with everything that encircles my body and leaves me awestruck.

While actually, you're not the epitome of my desires. You're not the manifestation of my love. You're a boy- a great one at that with a beautiful mind and open palms- I've always loved big hands. But what I'm feeling is something so much bigger. Something that has been here and will last so much longer than this night- this month- however long our lives will last. And the next morning, I'll stare silently at the ceiling and listen to you breath with no words in mind. And I'll feel strangely unsatisfied- more disconnected from you than ever. I am, after all, completely alone.

Me and the wind and the mountains and the frost- that's what I've got and you're a beautiful facet of it all- with a lovely face and the kind of arms that swallow me and hide my face in your chest- it feels so good. Like I'm safe and I stop and just feel the warmth and I forget what shoes I'm wearing and- for just a second but that's enough- I forget what color my hair is.

But attributing my own ability to come face to face with a power this big, to you- is a little deluded. And attributing all of that power to something in you that draws me in- well that's a little demeaning don't you think? Don't you think that assuming the fluxes, the forces, that literally rock my core, are only the effects of this thing we may have and the warm rough sensation of your hand against my back, is not quite giving it the credit it deserves?

Or maybe it's just the packaging of the same damn thing that laces everything I touch but this one makes sense to me, speaks my language, glues everything together in a way that's palatable, and fits into my notches seamlessly, like this was meant to be, and maybe it was.

But when I say I love you- and believe me I do- what I mean is that I love the way that vertebrae get slowly, gradually bigger as they work their way down. I love the way that skin stretches over the collar bone to create that little indent right above the bone, like it was draped over a clothes line. You could almost fill that little indent with sugar or, in a rainfall, it would pool with water and stay there for a day or two after the clouds clear. And when I say I love you, what I mean is that I love the way a cut heals- how one day, a little thin stretch of skin will span the tiny slit where I knicked myself and tore the ties. And how healing a wound is always a little bit of a leap of faith. But it worked. And it worked last time which is the only reason I'm still here and you're still beside me.

But one day- that leap of faith may not work and the wound will grow wider and skin is no longer strong enough to hold back the cleaving and will instead give in and melt away, and slowly fall apart.

I just want to stand next to you. I just want you to revel with me. Because my two eyes aren't always enough to take all of this in. And I'm not always strong enough to let myself fall. I want your hand pressed against my back, to be eased down in your arms. I just need hands to catch me as I fall.

Stoking this Fire

I scroll up and down a message you sent to me, for the third time. An email. How ridiculous. Looking up and down, admiring the spaces in between your words, measuring this one and comparing it to the next, your phrases, like I'm somehow caressing your back and your body by perusing these typed words. Looking for a way to find something more in this. To maybe turn it sideways as if some extra words will be hidden in a corner, feeling a freckle on your already perfect body that I haven't felt before, skimming my body down yours like if we keep moving, we'll keep growing closer into each other- exploring more and more, little cracks in.

My general concept of life- my religion, so to speak- although it's almost an anti-religion- a belief in a super-natural as opposed to a supra-natural- is, simply, “water flows downhill”. The world is in a constant process of melting and flowing into the cracks, oozing slowly, sloughing off and falling away, moving beautifully around the obstacles, blessing everything it collides with and rolls lazily off of, with this relinquish. This melting matrimony, powerless but irrevocable, swept up to fall down and regrow, regenerate. But you, my love, without even trying, I'm swept up and off my little world. Yet more connected than ever. My relinquishing this time has floated me up, lifted me up. By no means of my own, beyond means of my own, I've broken laws and my stream flows uphill, encircling itself, each other for the first time, growing closer and closer, forming compounds that never were before. This makes so much sense, redefining physics my dear, I had no idea.

These rules don't apply and now, just glimpsing this precipice of godly resignation, this completed, fully fulfilled striving, a striving to get inside through you, to access something through you, with you- my rubbing, my wrestling, this gliding towards each other- to get inside, to join, to fit and consummate... something. This pulsating exploration, my loving you, feeling you, this blissful blissful struggle as you hold my hands behind my head to come into me, contorting to find a closer way to hold me- I'll give myself to you completely, my love. I trust you beyond everything. I trust some part of you that you probably don't even see. That speaks my language on such a level, it's nothing even visible, just a shuffling under my feet, rooting me stronger, a sweet little jostling, holding me closer.

Who knew, rocks, the rubbing of two rocks, of two separate elements, would make this fire and heat us both. To heat the space in between. That quivering space- that I peruse, shake and test, explore around. This space we can caress but not overcome- heats us- it feeds us, heats us both- palpating divine, my love. Stay with me. Please stay with me. Keep stoking this fire.
 

My baby my baby my honey baby
This hunger I have for you can't be alleviated
Even your touch, even your body beside mine
Even when we can get no closer possibly
I still want you with hunger that I can't express
can barely satisfy
These pangs I get
of all my latent desire building up from a day
from all my wanting, of looking, of hoping
and dreaming of you- of someone like you- of passion like this
crops up- my desire, that building latent desire
or a little flash. A flash of recognition. I remember the way you laugh
or a little slant of the head
it crops up and builds against a floodgate- to come crashing crashing down.
I want to rage with every muscle in my body
To dissimulate, pixelate, disassociate and reform inside of you-
surrounded by, mingling amongst you
To squeeze you so hard- as if maybe that will make you pop and scatter
like glitter into a billowing cloud that maybe I can crawl inside of
take those particles and spread them in my pores.
I want you my darling my darling my darling
I want you. I want to fight with you and scream and crash
and make love, laugh with you, watch you and hear you think,
watch you puzzle, I want to pixelate,
for our mutual vulnerability to deform us-
strip us down naked and I want then
I want then to make love to you.
To feel all of you inside of and surrounding me.
Your arms around my back, my neck, my head and yours,
my thighs, my throat your hair and your back
your back, I love your back- I love your arms. Your chest against mine.

And this want- this need- is transcendent of now and you there, me way over here.
We pop up together, arise out of, opt out of- together- time and spatial orientation, coordinates
for a moment, or longer- that spot free floating above the right side of your lip
and that birth mark buried in the hair of your head right before your ear
the left one, right there, your right, you're so right.
Those are the only coordinates I need right now and the space- that tiny glimpse of eternity- that neverless gasp, the gape, of your breath- between your breaths. The pit, the spot, the cradle of time- that tiny little pause- the death of it and my thousand little deaths- between your breaths and mine- is all the time I need. I need I need its all the orientation I need.
I long for. I long for you so long for you, my baby my darling, my sweet sweet sweet.

My temper- I temper myself. I must- this is, that is what we do- we temper ourselves- pick the mid-spot- that's how we survive- to temper ourselves because there's eternity at either end and we live in the middle. Life is right in the middle.
This life of you and me, our lives, our life- exists right in the middle- tempered, mortal maybe, although a glimpse here and there, right there I saw it- a glimpse above like a keyhole- a puncture in the night sky. That little impossible luminescent dot shimmering through- fools, it fools me. And gives me faith- for a moment- a moment of chance. A possibility to be fooled, to live like that, to live creating for myself- a world out of those shimmers, those luminescent dots- sacrilege to even describe them as dots, those little spots, the freckles all over your body.
I choose to live believing in this.

Butter

All of a sudden, something has switched, a light has flicked on- not changing anything in the room, just casting a different light on it all.

Something happened. There was no way I could have known but like an asteroid on path- no question as to its bull's-eye route, imperceptibly, we pummeled gently into each other's paths and came to a slow, gradual halt face to face. Like a boat docking, sliding right into place, unaware of its path until it arrived, like butter, he slipped into my open hands.

Serendipity- upon arrival- transposes into fate. And genetics, wrapping, spindeling around each other in a sudden vacuum, when tapped into just right, lines up to reveal something worth having faith in, this godly languish, this limp, strangely empowered resignation.

Like a page torn off and placed in a puddle, the space behind the words I read, is saturated and dappling with my lovely lovely.

He finds his way into most crowds and the transcient opalescence, my diaphanous darling, of an embellished imagination outshines these charcoal sketches of skin. Reality plus one- my favored picture.

My first new leave was a welcomed respite. The smell of his aftershave was replaced by the completely different but equally pleasant smell of fresh sheets in a guest bed and the warm dead weight of the house's dog nestled between my legs. I stretched myself out, immediately absorbing the role of companionship. The very short time I spent laying in bed before falling asleep was kept in the best possible company by and amongst myself as I realized, again and again, that I am my favorite companion. Reconnecting with that after recontextualizing for a brief bit amongst someone else- laying on my side talking to him as if I were saying all these things out loud for the first time. My own thoughts sounded new and revealing as I took them out for him to see. That familiarity and comfort that my relationship with myself is blanketed by, is removed as I open up my own coveted ecosystem to this new stimulus to see if something new can be introduced without disrupting the current homeostatic balance.

It's an interesting challenge, a dissonance between wanting the company of someone else without losing the company of myself. I don't know how to emphasize enough the companionship I have with myself, how completed I feel alone. Maintaining that with someone else- keeping both relationships intimate and strong without compromising or withholding from either- integration not replacement.

I've never allowed someone in, found someone so close to me, tapping into me just right- cleaving me open in a straight clean cut from the outside in. It was never a question. It was never a choice. Those two relationships have never come face to face before, that boundary line never blurred. But blindly, I've stumbled upon the one chemical that is able to softly, sweetly erode my marble walls, sloughing off effortlessly like shudden sheets of tissue paper. And now I stare at the ceiling, the room breathing with me, goading me on, thinking, "What have I done?"