i don't care one way or another

 I hope this happens to you

I swear

I hope your heart bursts in a good way

I hope you meet someone you makes you do all those things you've only read about or would have if you read

I hope you stop eating your heart out and save a little of your appetite for something good

remember good?

I thought we had it and maybe we did

maybe we didn't

we did

but we don’t

well here's some news I hope you can't take:

I'm happy 

I'm overwhelmed

I never made a mistake but I made choices that worked out some other way and now I'm here writing something for you to never read

get well soon

please

in the meantime 

know that love always runs the risk of turning into the biggest mistake you’ve ever made

but it's the only thing worth the trouble it might cause

or so i said to myself about you then as your misery swallowed you like the ocean and i watched from the shore 

you know what they say about people drowning

they say watch them die

well i watch no more

oh yeah

did i forget to mention

how happy i am?

clarity

Funny you should ask about that

I just heard the end of the road has nothing to do with the road

and while I won't take credit for that quote or all its wisdom

I'll take credit for saying it to you on a rainy day when you're far away.

I don't know what a timeline is

because where I am has nothing to do 

with how I got here.

I say this to you truly

because I have bartered the isle of Manhattan for beads like the misunderstood and 

misnomered Indians of yore.  

I lived simply and honestly and was suckered by well dressed Europeans offering anything at 

all for something that no one could own yet they figured out how, practically.

oh well.

Now I have paid attention to the world since those fateful days

as the best parts of my environment turned into buildings I've no reason to enter--

thinking I, too, was now stone

and my fields having been ravaged by locusts, so to speak

and then a light

'la belle dame sans merci' or something more original and fitting but maybe a little more 

stunning and a lot more kind

and hey she looked like you

just you 

because that's who she was and still is

and in a breath

the terra cotta facades and glassy skyscrapers

seemed teeming voluptuous and glistening

and guess who did that for me

that was you too 

I felt a small pilgrim in the city I am seeing for the first time as it really is

and I'm ashamed to have ever been angry or sad or jealous

you gave me that and give me that

and whether or not I die shivering in the cold

or retire to a farm upstate to sit fireside for eternity

on rainy and far away days

I still get to think about the way your patience and grace let me kiss you in the rain

on some bench dedicated to strangers maybe but built just for us

in a park designed by transcendentalists once inhabited by indigenous

both of them watching from the sweet hereafter and cheering the both of us on

for finally finally finally visiting the park 

to actually transcend.

i’ll sleep with the window open

i’ll sleep with the window open

so you can come in and

curl up next to me

i’ll sleep with the window open for your

freshly bodiless glistening gossamer 

smelling like whatever it was you sprayed yourself like marlboro lights

i can still remember how warm you were for winter in your little blue car and how shocked i was you wanted anything to do with me and how warm you were and how good you smelled and how warm you were and your breath of course and how warm you were and those riddles before that kiss and how warm you were and those other kisses and eventually how mean you got not on purpose but probably on purpose and how spatchcocked and naive i was for all of it

over time you would tell me things that happened to you and i would or would not know how to respond i would know only they were godawful

i always wanted better for you and wanted to be whatever that better was but i was not and now we know that nothing ever would be. maybe something else was but however it was it was not enough because i guess it was all too much in a goodbye cruel world type of way

i’ll sleep with the window open and maybe you can come wafting in like the scent of a cartoon pie and for the first time in my life i’ll know you’re okay. who knows what happens when we die surely not I but 

I’ll sleep with the window open knowing some little strand of light that’s you will land on me in the middle of the night and my back will arch and i’ll remember how hard i tried to hold on and why but this time it won’t be any of the holding on it will be the memory of it and i’ll have some dream i hopefully won’t remember 

i’ll sleep with the window open so you can waft out again and higher and higher you go into the sky and if i were to look and i wont but were i to you would seem some curling strand i’d try to blink away like i’m blinking now because i’m crying for reasons i believed were gone but they’re not and you are

.

you texted me after almost twenty whole years of silence i suspect we were both killing time between tragedies as always and you texted me and seemed okay and sent some old pictures and seemed fine and told me about your life and seemed happy and let me know you think about me every day because my name has been part of your passwords and i cracked a joke at what an honor it has been to protect you all these years 

well it was

you don't have to take your shoes off

hey there I was just thinking

when we get there

don't look at the cables behind the television stand

just look at my eyes

there are spaces where pictures hung so

don't look at the walls

just listen to me talk

if you go into the kitchen

don't see the dishes in the sink

just look at the spice rack or the tiles i put up

nice

in the bathroom there's an air freshener

don't look at the floor or behind the toilet

just be surprised how good it smells

in the bedroom there's laundry folded on an ironing board

don't mind the mess

just bring your face over here i want to smell it

look at my eyes again

don't look in

just look at the brown part

the irises

my eyes do this thing when your face moves close to mine

the black gets bigger

you're so close

closer than most

and i'm thinking about the cluttery table covered in mail

don't look at the cluttery table - that’s the edge of a whirlpool

just like my insides

circling debris and now it’s faster and there's nothing at the center and it’s pulling you in and my eyes are all black now 

don’t look at them

just look at your phone

this was nice let's do this again sometime