I want (something like) this to be my last confession:

Hurried, shallow breathing, not seeing straight, a sudden ache in my heart, but with certain clarity–

I love you–

as simply as that, and nothing more.

(right.

now.)

When we pulled up to the airport curb on Tuesday, I debated furiously in my head whether or not to stay a while with you. I opted to not, because even as I pulled away from our quick hug, I could feel the emotion rising in my throat.

I pulled away just in time, you see. I didn’t cry even after I got home.

It’s been a little over a year since we’ve been apart. Sometimes when I look through our pictures I wonder who you are. And yet, when we video call, it still feels familiar, safe—comforting.

To be honest, I am confused about how I’m supposed to feel. On the one hand, you’ve become a stranger; on the other, I’ve never loved you more.

Today I am fragile
pale
twitching
insane and full of purpose.

I’m thinking of my lover:
my soft hips pressing his coarse belly,
my tongue on a salmon nipple,
his hand buried in my thick orange hair
the telephone ringing.

I’m thinking we tend our illnesses
as if they are our children:
fevered
screaming
demanding attention and twenty dollar bills,
hours we could have spent making love with the television on.

Faith is a series of calculations
made by an idiot savant.
I’m in love.
I’m alone
in this city of painted boxes
stacked like alphabet blocks
spelling nothing.

There are things I know:
trees don’t sing
birds don’t sprout leaves
roses bloom because that’s what roses do,
whether we write poems for them
or not.

I concentrate on small things:
ivy threaded through chain link,
giveaway kittens huddled in a soggy cardboard box,
a fat man blowing a harmonica
through a beard of rusty wires
brown birds chattering furiously on power lines.

I try not to think about
lung cancer, AIDS,
the chemicals in the rain;
things I can’t imagine any more than
a color I’ve never seen.

My heart is graffiti on the side of a subway train,
a shadow on the wall made by a child.
Nothing has been fair since my first skinned knee

I believe death
must be.

I cling to love as if it were an answer.
I go on buying eggs and bread,
boots and corsets,
knowing I’ll burn out before the sun.

I’m thinking of
the days I tried to stay awake
while the billboards and TV ads
for condoms, microwave brownies, and dietetic jello
lulled me to sleep.

A brown-eyed girl once told me a secret
that should have blown this city
into a mass of unconnected atoms
Our sewage is piped to the sea.
Beggars in the street
are hated for having the nerve
to die in public.

Charity requires paperwork,
Relief requires medication

as if we were the afterthoughts of institutions
greater than our rage.

Gravity chains us to the asphalt with such grace
we think it is kind.

We all go on buying lottery tickets
Diet Coke and toothpaste
as if the sky over our heads
were the roof of a guilded cage.

We provide evidence that we were here:

initials cut into cracked vinyl bus seats,
into trees growing from squares
of concrete,
a name left on a stone, an office building,
a flower, a disease, a museum,
a child.
Tonight the stars glitter like rhinestones
on a black suede glove.

In the coffin my room has become,
I talk to God
about the infrequency of rain
about people who can’t see the current gentleness
running under the pale crust of my skin.

I tell him under
the jackhammer crack, the diesel truck rumble,
even the clicking sound traffic lights make
switching from yellow to red,
there is a silence
swallowing
every song,
conversation,
every whisper made beside graves
or in the twisted white sheets of love.

I tell him I can’t fill it
with dark wine, blue pills,
a pink candle lit at the altar
the lover
touching my hair.
God doesn’t answer.
God doesn’t know our names.

He’s only the architect
designing the places we occupy
like high rise offices or ant hills

I know this
the way I know
sunrise and sunset
are caused by the endless turning
of the Earth.

When I am gone, I will write to you, and only you.

We’re fighting again, and not about the right thing. Sure, on the surface it’s about timeliness, but really, we’re both scared, because I’m moving to Japan in two months.

For a year.

If that’s not a strain for a relationship I don’t know what is.

I wonder if we will still be together a year from now. An even better question—two years from now?

She doesn’t realize she is humming until he starts to sing softly along with her. She smiles at that and he brings her close. Closer and closer, until she can’t breathe.

She hears his steady breathing, and thinks, this silence is nice too.

They meet when she is 18 years old. He introduces himself to her (eagerly, she thinks, and later she will find that this is how he introduces himself to all people, over zealous, over friendly, aiming to please). Freak, she thinks in her head and doesn’t think about him again until a year later.

He’s not particularly tall or handsome (well he is a good seven inches taller than her, but so skinny, and not very good skin), but he tries and she likes that. Sometimes he tries too hard, and that displeases her, but not enough to dissuade her next thoughts. I will have him, she thinks, and he will love me.

He does, a year and a half later, love her. She laughs about it with her friends, seemingly happy and confused, but laughs about it with herself knowingly albeit incredulously—is this really happening? And when his mouth is over hers a year after that, she knows, yes, this is really happening. She wonders about the next step, love and its consequences.

Anonymous asked: Thank you for this year. It's been a wonderful journey.
I believe in love now too....

Dear Anonymous,

Thank you for your lovely note. Good luck!