a secret in 4 parts

1.1 here's the secret
in your absence my love turns into green apples
i imagine eating them with you
under the trees

2.1 i left the bar when it was raining
down the stairs, into the night
except...
everything turned into poetry
tom waits was playing
i smoked under the christmas lights
thinking about unrequited love

3.1 here's the secret
i don't miss you anymore

2.2 it's been raining since you left

1.2 there are no apples

4.1 i don't miss you anymore

2.3 um, I don't even know you?

0.1 when i am with you, the air i breath turns into bone

3.1.1 but...

2.4 the romantic and the cynic have been battling since we met
even the cynic wants to throw the game
lose spectacularly

0.2 we all carry the past within us
in the crook of our dendrites
in the lines of our palms
in our bones

1.3 here's the secret
there are apples when you touch me

4.1.1 i will always miss you

4.2 you understand the beauty of the perfect moment

2.5 i loved you at first sight (more or less)

2.5.1 a secret i try to keep from myself

3.2 i loved you when you told me "this is what a pecan a tree smells like"

4.3 i loved you at first sight (more or less)

1.4 i will never know when I first loved you

0.3 everything turns into the beating of blood
everything turns into poetry
everything turns

0.4 here's the not-very-well-kept secret
I confuse dreams with reality

0.4.1 because i am human

1.5 thank you

4.4 thank you

Strangely enough, writing it in a blog is not the same as saying it in person. What exactly are you good for, o all-encompassing internet?

We never even got a chance to lie in bed while it was raining outside. Curled against one another, looking out the window.

I bet it would have been lovely.

Goodbye, David Wheeler Wynn.

new constellation

I want to make a new constellation
fashioning stars from rusted pocket watches and kindergarteners' art projects
old library cards and cats' stares
the shape of our hands while we sleep
the smell of pecan trees
my first thoughts upon waking
the color of your beard
train whistles, snail shells, and the tiredness of old men
the sounds that slip from us during sex
secret gardens and crushed wisdom teeth
the space above your collarbone
timelines
disappearing magic
all the tiny things that slip away
and the crinkles at the corner of your eyes

we can give each star its own gravity and spin
spend sunday afternoons lazily naming our favorites
and then pin it in my hair
or rest it on your pillow
or place it in the stillest part of me
where its orbits will carve spirals on my spine
and my veins will become entangled with its meteors
until eventually my movement, my pulse
will depend upon its nightfalls

Damn.

How to understand this microcosm that is another person. With its own arching galaxies, and infinite nightfalls, and flashing suns busily turning hydrogen into helium. With its own inhalations and exhalations (that sometimes match mine.) How to taste the truth hidden inside, like a vial of honey that will never spoil. How to understand this pull from the center, this pull from me to you, that makes me want to smooth the hairs on your belly.

I want to get before myself, turn the lights on and off, on and off, on and off, and look at you.

You had me at...

"This is what a pecan tree smells like."

Um, I may have met the perfect guy.