I think that I froze up on some level
when we were making love
(here I blush, knowing
that you’ll tease me mercilessly
for calling it that – ‘you’re so dramatic!’)
even though nothing stopped &
I don’t think I even registered the feeling
in an immediate sense

but I couldn’t quite process the sight of yr face
beaming up at me, the bits of gradient pink
that subtly flushed yr skin, which in
places was still swan-pale & delicate
from memory

the bigness of those eyes!
& how intently
suddenly
we were looking at one another

the soundless opening of yr lips
softly shifting with our
motions

& I could remember the past
seemingly,

my perimeters
shot through with orange & red
& canary yellow
becoming more & more unwieldy

I felt scared underneath
the joy
because I feared these
invisible discs of emotion &
percussive belief
would choke us both

& I’d somehow manage to ruin it again
in chancing exultation

so some switch up there
maintained a discrete
division & allowed the moment
to yawn out, just as the colors
pulled back &

I knew enough not to
mention it.

---------------------

at times, chere, it is profoundly saddening
that you don’t seem to remember almost anything
of us

at least not in the way that I do,
in color, over-vivid,
packed with detail upon detail

glances, movements, exclamations, arcs, declinations,
bodies, intent, laughter, the feel of a body & a self to
each sense

the cannonball & the rollercoaster & the pregnant metaphor

& the feeling of sheet-rain making yr teeth rattle
& the plaintitive look as I put my arms
around you for the first time
to keep you warm


everything that I feverishly orbited around
became debris of yr unwanted life

...or maybe the memory of children,
which in a real sense we were

so in the vertiginous now
that we are tentatively
constructing & nurturing


I suppose
my sadness about the past is leavened with
substantial hope -
even as the discs & their
canary yellow edges
wallop me into
forbidding states of happiness that
I have no right
to feel.

09/29/2011

Posted on 09/06/2012
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