#211

i talk about you from time to time. don't worry, i don't use your name. and even if i did, no one here knows who you are.
but, like most things, that was your choice too.
at first i was hurt; it confused me that you got bored. we were spontaneous and brilliant together. you brought words out of me that i never knew i had. for awhile, i thought i showed you just how much love could be real for you.
now i get it. you thrive on instability- you create mistakes and insecurities, and i saw too much in you that was strong and complete and good, and that... well, that wouldn't fit with your constant need for misery.
you have found nothing. exactly what you are looking for. you just don't know it yet.

#210

we slept to an hour that is usually considered late, like we slept in, you know what i mean, but he didn't comment on it or apologize for seeming lazy. the sun was up and high, trying different angles from the drawn blinds like a peeping tom.
i sat next to him, eating our apple jacks, and staring at my still-winter-white legs, flexing and stretching my muscles, and he puts an old Cash record on. i feel like a dreamer again- planning for the next stage of life, hoping for the best and ticking off mental laundry lists of everything beautiful coming in big numbers; ignoring the firm reality of input vs output.
today, for now, we are staying here, in a single moment.

#209 (compliments to w. whitman)

she pauses for moment beside the last picture in the hall, placing a trembling hand on the glass. a crooked-lipped boy grows from infancy to adulthood in the space between the foyer and the den.
"A child said 'What is the grass?' fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he."
she knows that all things begin because they are meant to end.
"I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps."
there is no need to look. every smile is memorized, the cowlicked hair (so obvious no matter the style), the creases of every ironed shirt etched into her mind.
"All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier."