In high powered streetlights and low level bridges. The wandering nights of a conversation interspersed with hours of separation. You found in me an I in you. A you in I. We loved (but not too much) in all the right ways and ended on the other side of phrases. Choked with one too many quips or quivers against your ear. I followed and fell. You fell and followed. The opposites of accidents and accidental opposition. We spun inside the curl of current and drifted downstream. Until we were too far from where we started to know where we had come to rest.

Not just here. Everywhere. I haven’t been anywhere. Which you claim is impossible, but these months disappear under something I can’t explain. Maybe too much snow, maybe darkness. But, in fact, I have been away. The unspoken always remains unheard, n’est-ce pas? And what is, what could possibly be, the sound of disconnection? A pop, a snap, a snarl, a slorp. The click of heels on linoleum tile. It is the sound of belief and disbelief in love, in forgiveness. The sound of rejecting a celebration of one’s value. I approach minor milestones with apprehension.

“There ain’t no dress rehearsal,” he says. My ankles twitch against atrophy. Events tumble into avalanche and all my fears are buried. Nothing waits. I can be within or without. These are the doors: one, two, three. We always want door number four.

Fuck this. The whipping tongues of infatuation twine with barbed-wire anxiety and I am hung by the skin of my elbows. Desire becomes anger in the crinkling of a nose. And you you you are not what you seem. And this. Fuck this. All metal and noise racing down my hair past my face. The spun-silk bars of cages we weep against with joy. And comfort. Rebellion will be placated. Rage will never be what is supposed to come. They will trickle and knock pipes against walls at inconvenient hours of the day. The noise and bluster of sneering regret. I hate it all. But not enough. To throw away what doesn’t matter. Scrape my heels for the rest.