For April 4: of old lovers and otherwise

I fix the fissures everyday. Put on a happy face a good show an excellent pair of shoes, my best come hither but not too close, smile. I read the papers, bob my head, know all the notes pretend I know exactly where I’m going and which sultry glass of wine I’ll drink when I get there. I’m telling small fibs and larger ones; let’s not call them lies, too obvious. I can’t even make a haiku, can’t follow form, these days, and can’t follow. These days don’t follow. I allow myself these small indulgences. Memories. Across ten thousand miles and years and years of history, bad food on strange continents, too much sun too many secrets, so many times we got lost, willing ourselves to never be found .Now I understand, you never needed the rescue party. I did then, I do now. I want someone to hold me down. So little left of me, I am afraid of blowing away- Damn you. For not being here. For treating me like something you found in your shoe. Small, dark, hard, dirty… Something invisible and wrong. Smudge. Crumb. Grain of rice- Damn you. So many years ago… Across ten thousand miles, from the grey end of the spectrum You call me. 3 in the morning. You call me. Half asleep, how could I not be? But your voice, cold and damp as predawn, wanting. I always wanted to fix you. Tell you stories. Hold you down, quite the dust in your limbs. Still the urgency, the ocean never stops. Your ocean always sounds the same. 3 am, noon, a year ago, forever in my head on an endless loop. “You’re so much better then this. I’m not worth loving…” Untrue. Untrue. Untrue. And I did already. Love you. Still do. Your absence like a presence I can’t wash away. Should have known better, that everything breaks. Is broken already…some of us carry shards in our palms, hoping. Or just living. Stigmata? Warning? Ignore it. Cross against traffic, climb the fence, say the words…live. I’m playing the game. I am out running night terrors. Pretending I haven’t woken myself crying four days in a row, 5 am, screaming “I don’t want it”, repeatedly. As if you can hear me. And I mean it. I would give you away for nothing. Keep the memories, you not being here and being here, I don’t want that. I can’t breathe through it. But I can’t give you away. You catch me, a fish in a saltwater prison- I can touch everything. My touch turns everyone to coal. I am soot black, ash cold, making it up on the fly. So I am scouting café’s, eavesdropping, drinking with both hands, hunting for a pulse- my own or someone else’s, no matter. Tonight it is butter coloured leather and the velvet underground. Spanish red and The New York Times. I want nothing. I have nothing. Next to me, two late thirties white guys in beat up fedoras, too short trousers and wedding rings talk about their next big advertising coup. I could not care less; I welcome the sound, the emptiness. As they leave, mr right side casts me a sidelong glance. I remember that humans are supposed to be social…”hello”, just that. “You destroy me with your eyes”, he says. And before I can tell him, before I know its true- that I feel incapable, a cipher, a seizure, a muted siren in fading shades of dusty covered sepia, before I can tell him, “I know.” He’s out the door- a fading shape in worn out tweed.