potential

I think I was in love with your potential.

Real or imagined

Yeah

2nd most drunken poem ever

Actually, it is probably the third. There is that one I don't think about, scrawled on cloud paper, full of whispers, that fell into the mysterious space between the bed and the wall, which I never retrieved. Pretending I don't see it on those rare occasions when I remove the socks and the novels and the cds from under my bed. So, third most drunken poem ever. This morning I removed the lines in which I compared love to a slutty, insecure unicorn. Yeah, drunken poetry is uber-fabulous.

I am not drunk-dialing you
even though I am eating left-over Chinese food
plucking bamboo shoots off my breasts
and counting the roaches in my kitchen
even though the night is short, I will not call you
I don’t understand why I am letting you go
Whatever, I’m calling you right now
I want to hear your belief in me
I wait, body heavy, toes numb
imagining the cat toy is a subatomic particle
imagining I am filled with light

When we are older, I will rest you in a basket and set you out to sea
I don’t want you to be a dream from which I will awake

I forget what I want and am then disappointed when I don't get it.

Somehow what happened between us was necessary. I don't know how. Something inarticulate, something untroubled knows this. Perhaps I am just making up stories to soothe myself. Most probably I am.

I guess we'll have this between us forever. It's not the kind of unbreakable connection I would have wished for. I prefer moonlight, awkward mattresses, shadows of eyelashes. Those moments that were sharp and clear. Only those. Those that were biting, wintry, taking your breath away.

I want your eyes to be clear. A sense of comfort or safety. I want to live in a world where I don't have to wish for these things. I don't want to nurse this broken, grey thing between us. But I don't know any other way. So I will always know where you are. And I will keep imagining that it is winter and I am tucking something under your windshield wipers. Something that explains why it was necessary. Something to set us free.