Bright Boles in a Fading Light

I was bundled up, truncated -
syntax out of whack,
trying on personae like pairs of jeans.
I was profligate.

I wriggled on the vine in ever newer colds.
I was parasitic to my self.
My chrysalis was my boredom.
Which is not to say that I've come out better.
Love doesn't redeem per se.


Everyone stands naked at some point during the day.
Takes stock of themselves.
Chooses to live.  Or doesn't.
This is an absurd but necessary point.

Every love story doesn't end.
Every love story is ultimately inexplicable.
Every love story includes some, or many, distances physical and emotional.
Every love story is a mountain range somehow always shrouded in mist.

Every love story is a hyacinth in July.
And a lilac in November.
Every love story is a trace of every other.
Every love story is every ripple of every river that ever went to the sea, every magenta and ochre air put on by the hale hardwoods of the west, every glance of an eye across the world, every touch and sound and scrape of skin.
Every love story is a fascination with ephemera.  Thumbs.  A particular smell.  A single, private memory.
Every love story doesn't end.

Can you 'explain to me how we're so immediately alive'?

Can you begin to account for this?

What has been will be and what is remains indelibly.
I can trace your face a thousand times and never limn it.

What is slaked by you is not lust.

Where the night-time monsters live we have made a home.
And where the day-time monsters roam we dance.

Mountain passes will take you to others' arms.
Forgotten ponds rimmed with aspen will drown me.
Skies will plume with all manner of cloud and days.
Moons will appear like the passes of a sickle in a wheat field.
But we, body and spirit, are inseparable despite what lays between here and there.

I'll see you in my dreams.



Inspiration provided by "I'm Only Now Beginning to Answer Your Letter" by Olena Kalytiak Davis.

The night's come again, my dear boy, and this time it's for good.
Don't worry, your legs going out from under you is supposed to happen.
Come here, sweetheart.  Come close.  I know.  This is weird.

Now your weight is pressed against me,
now your enlarged heart is echoing life in your chest,
now you can only stare straight ahead while we wait for
the rest.  Minutes pass.  
Lock eyes for the last time.  There are whole skies
in them.  Always have been.  Stars wheeling around, rearranging, wind through the wail
of our days together, loud laughter and wet mornings with soaking dews.
I hit you once.  I hope you didn't hold that against me.
Just lean into me.  He'll be back soon and this will be over.
Thank you for saving my life back there.  We had our time and I'll 
always cherish it.  It's not your fault I couldn't keep you afterwards.

The light is flickering annoyingly at irregular intervals.
Doctor back.
Can you still see that?
Second injection.

Your soft pink tongue leaks out of a numb mouth.  Can't stop crying.
 
No moment, just all and then none.  He's gone before half the liquid's in.
We are with each other here and forever.  This 
lasts, I tell myself.  This lasts.  And, never again.  But there will be again.

We'll let have you have as much time as you need.  Just leave him here when you're done.  We'll take care of the rest.

Okay.  Thank you.
 
You're the most innocent being I've ever known and I'm sorry 
for this.  I know you don't understand.  I don't really either.  This or anything.
At least it was in my arms.  Most don't
get that.  At times lately that has seemed the most selfish thought
I've ever had.

I lay him on his right side.  Facing north.  Close his eyes.  Close the door.





I miss you, jaxypants.