ACHE

Beginning
End.

THE DECEPTION OF PASSING TIME

Six months is nothing

Flies by

Weightless

Unless you’re in jail

Or 12-years-old and anxious for the summer to end

All weekdays at the beach

Kicking sand on your brother

Enjoying new bodies

Worn by new girls

You’ve never laid eyes on before.

But at this ripe old age

Careening slowly towards extinction

6 months

All we had

Sped by in a dream of reckless love

Compliant kisses

Teenaged tumescence rekindled

By the surprise writ with a capital “Us.”

Our eyes first met

Yesterday

or was it 186 days ago

And poof! Now it’s over.

No reasons explain the depth of this loss

The magnitude of this kinetic, chemical kismet.

The impossibility of language

To concretize any cohesive meaning

From the importance of that first moment

Luck-of-the-draw

One-in-a-million

Lightning strike chance meeting

Nor the severities of its posthumous dissolve.

In this lathered town of fickle nothingness

The vision of the two of you

Going through the motions

The ritualistic touches

Forced smiles

Emotionless, practiced appearances

Driven by memory of how it is “supposed to be”

Is it the living of a long lie?

Or the distorted funhouse mirror rationality

The ease of familiarity’s dulling draw

The Siren’s willowy call

Trading a possible life song of adventure, passion, risk

For a interminable sound bite of feeling unseen

Disrespected, taken for granted

Free of everything but the emptiness of what’s missing.

And oddly, time finds me

Under the sheet

Fucked

Ignored and under whelmed.

Desperate not for love

For we have found that without trying

Instead 

Believing and attempting to hold this delicate premise dear

Amidst the rancorous confusion

Wanting only to leave the hurt behind

Before the lie that love does not exist

Bludgeons us all into a life of true submission.

You claim prowess at departures

Being “good at disconnecting”

So forgive me if I have a hard time processing that.

I was busy listening to your racing heart against my chest

My hand on the small of your back

Your neck still wet from my kisses

Your eyes inches from me telling the truth

Like yesterday

Six months ago.

- For Beautiful Baby, Big Bear City, 9/16/15 

FAVORITE DREAM

Rolling over
The essential smell of your hair
embedded in my memory
as I staggered awake
clouded this dream's detail indescribably.
Frowning at the ceiling
a thin slice of sunlight
slipping through a hairline crack
along the roof beam edge
quickly disappears
proving the turning of the planet to greet the day
dissolving my night's vision:

some kind of clamshell
I struggle to pry open
trying at first delicately, softly with my fingertips
glimmers of progress
when applying Liquid Wrench
or oyster soup
there's a glimpse of a secret
peering out, winking at me
until the tip of my tongue
returns with the pearl
precious
accompanied by your giggle
your back to me
pulling the envelope
of my arms up and around you
as the pearl slips from my mouth
lands precariously
all slippery grace
perched in the hollow of your clavicle
while I whisper
"Favorite"
into your hair.

- for the Favorite, Sept. 17, 2015

THE EMPTY GOWN

The tan towels I bought you
Hang like an empty gown
Folded
Waiting
Never worn
As if there was some prom we never went to
Some future we never dove into
Some dream we wake from in bed alone.
Behind my bedroom door
Staring down on the sheets we stained with our love
Our tears
Where our laughter and orgasmic sighs filled the air
Hang my camo pjs and a fleece of mine you wore once
On one of the last nights you spent here
Remnants of some bygone age
When dreams of a glorious future in your arms
Still woke me each morning
Still invaded my waking moments
With hopeful smiles
Emboldened flirtations
Shivering anticipation of every new next time.

And still
Just now at 2:46 a.m.
A car pulls up the street
Probably someone made the wrong turn
Pulling over to check their GPS
Or answer their cell or light their joint
They pause in front of my house
Near the spot in the yard
In the garden named after you
Where I dug through dirt
Sifted rock and sand
Scattered seed, sprinkling new small pools of hope
Putting my focused, attentive, loving care
Towards something outside of me
Some small hole in the ground
And dreaming the idea of some future
Some possible blooming
A hope for color, sound and surprise
An echo of your first real kiss in eleven years
Around some distant corner in time…
But no matter
Those 8 hours I put in on this Wednesday
Not "Our Wednesday" but Wednesday none-the-less
6 months and a day after I first laid eyes on you
Tumbling
Into what likely will be my final stab
At realizing the love I’ve dreamed of
Since I caught wind of such magical ideas
Chasing them nearly 6 decades hence.

Still my heart momentarily races
Even with the knowing that it made no logical sense
That you’d pull into my driveway in the middle of the night
That you’d knock on my door
Or walk in as always jumping at the alarm
Into the house where we consumed each other
Every chance we could
And tonight, again you’d fall into my arms for good
Or for just one more chance ten more minutes
Just one more kiss
But my heart still raced ever so briefly
Hoping
Wishing
Yearning
Loving
The possibility
of you.

 - for my Beautiful Baby, September 17, 2015.
Scribbled on the couch where I lie waiting.