If you were here (or I were there), I would tell you I love you. This profound wave of the unconditional that I can neither explain nor support. I love the fact of your existence and that love becomes a joyful tracing of movement. The way you lean a skateboard back and forth down the sidewalk. I love your mismatched clothes and the jerking movements of your imperfect limbs. I love your tired smile and your tired jokes and your tired isolation. I love you because you do not know I love you. And if I told you, instead of believing that perhaps I leave a trail of barely perceptible affection like the scent of twilight, you wouldn’t accept it. Or you would and I would forget how to offer. The way words forget what it means to love. The unknown with a whole heart.
Archive for the 'explanations and things left unsaid' category
These neologisms would not catch on
She cannot admit that she misses him. It would perforate her larynx and puncture his inner ear. She is frustrated with the weight of phrases that should be light and uttered often. She wishes there were other words with the shape of this gap and the shade of this affection. Her tongue is ossifying with the unsaid.
Postcards #7 & #8
You once asked me about all the things I should say. Everything I wanted to say but wouldn’t. Because the phrases meant nothing or something or anything. I’ll say one thing now: I loved the you that wasn’t really you. My larynx crumbled under the shift of your tectonic tongue.
***
I promised we were done. We were done. Except that I can’t get my skin back. You left a layer of ancient volcanic ash that wouldn’t scrape clean and can’t be excavated. So I keep dropping these postcards in the mailbox. Because it’s better than knowing who you are now.
Postcard #4
I think you would be amused to learn how much hip-hop and rap I listen to now. I don’t wish you were here to find out. I can’t pinpoint. You said we were bottomless in all the wrong ways. I didn’t know any beats sick enough to convince you otherwise.