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six steps back (w/ Gabriel Ricard)

by Ava Blu

Let’s clean up this mess,
figure out who keeps which books
and who deserves to make it
to the West Coast first.

We can’t keep a room together long
enough to play chess with our antiques,
so we may have to settle for checkers.

I don’t know. It’s times like this
when I’m usually very,
very quiet.

-We can burn our old bibles to make room.
We can play by candle light
and take a drink every time the open window
blows out the candle.

-I'm usually not up for conversations like this.
I'm usually not one to talk
during a game I know I can't lose.
I need the quiet to be able to feel the heat
grace my cheek.

-I need to figure out how to keep you
away from San Francisco.

Well,
it goes without saying
that I’d love to be there before I’m thirty,
but I always imagined you would be the first
between us to make it with time to kill.

Those California artist types
will love you first and then themselves,
and some of them can even make it through
the entire morning without taking a drink.

I’ve always admired that.

-They'll fight over guessing which flavor of tea I prefer
and I'll somehow seem phased over it.
I'll wait for my tea to cool while they yell profanities
in languages I've yet to learn.

-Damn hipsters.

-I won't offer you a place to stay
until you send the book you bought.
I know you use it as leverage to get me to say
I'm ok with you dating a mutual friend;

-I'll never be ok with it.

That’s fine. I may just wait until the morning
I wake up in some foreign country.

With nothing to my name but twenty dollars,
a pamphlet promoting good mental health
through spirituality, and a bride that thinks orange juice
gets in the way of vodka,
and already can’t stand the sight of me.

You’ll be in California,
and I do hope you’ll be happy.

I don’t have the necessary patience
to be cruel or sarcastic about that thought anymore.

-I don't feel sarcastic anymore either.

-I think the day we met to have one last fuck
eluded to how today would go.
I think you should've known I
could never not want to bring a knife to bed.

-I don't understand why I can't be
the bride choking on choices. I
don't wanna know why you would
settle for a woman who laughs when
you write a line about death over one
who can fuck you sideways and still
make the most delicious eggs
in the morning.

-Yeah, I wanna know why you
can't look at my dark hair, pale skin
and green eyes and say you still love me,
you still miss the way we fit along our spines.

It’s on my to-do list.
It’s a long assortment of things I plan to do
when my back gets better
and God gives me the go-ahead
to find enough candles in enough churches
to burn this town halfway to the ground.

The other half might well bring us back
to the good-old days.

And if it turns out instead
that nothing’s left,
then I guess we’ll live with that as best we can.

I think we could pull it off.
we’ve lived under more trying circumstances before.

-I think the day won't come soon enough
to salvage the brokenness between us.
Our days became numbered as soon
as we met one last time.

-I think the only thing we can pull off now
is the occasional dirty joke about the blood
we've shared and how you still hit on
every mutual friend we've ever had.

-One of these days we'll realize
the only place we belong
is with each other.

Let me think about that
and get back to you.

08/01/2011

Author's Note: In spite of everything we've been through, Gabe and I can always create some interesting poetry. This pleases me.

Posted on 08/01/2011
Copyright © 2024 Ava Blu

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by Anita Mac on 08/02/11 at 04:17 PM

It pleases me too. I was so happy to see this new one posted; it's quite wonderful. And whoever makes it to San Francisco first, I want couch crashing rights.

Posted by Paganini Jones on 08/11/11 at 05:16 PM

This is excellent - I particularly love the imagery at the start
We can’t keep a room together long
enough to play chess with our antiques,
so we may have to settle for checkers.

There's something of hope for the future in it - not we can't stay in the room to play chess so stay out of the rook, but so lets play something shorter... Yes. I rather like this :)

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