Untitled Something no. 2
The first time you
said you loved me you asked if that would scare me, and I said that I’m tougher
than I look, which was the wrong answer, although it is true, and here is what
I should have said: Darling, I love you like fireworks, like honestly and like
cat calls, like fast cars, more sun than usual, like inhale, exhale, make my
heartbeat get normal again, and darling, your lips are like an empty guest
bedroom but a car in the driveway, but stop making assumptions about what that
means. I love you like Independence Day, ironically enough. Me and you, we’re
two racing hearts and two narcissists with four sweaty palms and twenty tired toes
and you’re lovely even when you lie to me.
The night you
wouldn’t kiss me I said, “Take it or leave it,” but I couldn’t walk away. You
couldn’t take it, but you didn’t leave it, so I just stayed.
We are made of
broken things. You are built on broken families; I am built on broken promises,
and because of that, baby, I miss you in a way that makes me want to never let
you hear this poem. I wish that was a secret, but I am The Cellophane Girl and
The Cellophane girl wears her heart where it belongs, right behind her rib
cage, but she may as well wear it on her sleeve because The Cellophane Girl has
see-through skin.
They told you, they
said to you, “Sink or swim, kid,” but they didn’t know you could walk on water,
and you went running.
I can fly. I can
tell you about it, and when you listen to me talk about flight, by listening
you have taught me about standing still.
We talk about
horror movies and when we do it goes like this: You are quiet and I mumble
something like, “Pay attention to the way blood bleeds. You’ll learn something
from that, I bet.” Neither of us knows what I mean by that. I mean nothing by
that.
I ask too many
questions and you whisper, “Chew your food, darling. Stop swallowing things
whole,” and both of us know what you mean by that. You mean everything by that.
When I look at the
Tokyo sky I whisper things across the miles to you. I whisper things like, “The
poetry about this place practically writes itself,” and I’m sure that you hear
me, because we are watching the same sky tonight. Everything is foreign here,
and it reminds me of you, which is ironic, because I know you so well. I know
the shape of you and the smell of you and the curvature of your lips and the
oh-so-parallel lines of your hips, and I whisper to our sky, I whisper, “There
is a city in the sky, and everything about it, all of it, everything is
enormous and very small in the same moment” – you make me feel enormous and
very small in the same moment – “You’d appreciate the lavender staircases and
that one orange-tiled building that was skinnier than I am, especially after I
got my hands on ramen houses.” I hear your laugh across the miles.
We think about art
across the miles. You’re a minimalistic masterpiece. You’re something Warhol. I
am The Birth of Venus, and I am Cindy Sherman. We are not the same, but we
still fit inside an art museum. You tell me that’s all that really matters.
I think about God
and the two titans of the twentieth century and the way I’m sure they built
this city. Picasso shaped these buildings and Matisse grabbed his paints and
God shoved them close together, breathing his prayer into them, breathing his
prayer into us, me and you are leaping across telephone lines, gathering speed,
soaring through the clouds, turning into the skyline, shattering laws of
matter, laws of thermodynamics, but I was just dreaming that, which makes more
sense than anything has ever made to me.
I wore the fabric
of us today and suddenly you are back, you are whispering that it looks nice on
me, that it suits me, and I joke, saying, “Take it or leave it,” and then we
are living that midnight one more time, you are kissing me in the street,
kissing me goodbye, kissing me goodnight and the salt of your tears screams
just how human you are tonight.
Sometimes, I think
I can hear you praying for hope across the sky, and I whisper that I hope your
deity grants you that. I am not lying when I say that, but I hope I am lovely
even when I lie to you. You are lovely even when you lie to me.
Please understand
my poetic justice, but know that darling, these days, I see right through your
poker face, and that I think you’re lovely even when you lie to me.
Hollaback.
All my love,
Addy
Hollaback.
All my love,
Addy