День в истории Блогхауса: 25 ноября 2019

Close your eyes. A lover is standing too close

to focus оn. Leave me blurry and fall toward me

with your entire body. Lie under the covers, pretending

to sleep, while I'm in the other room. Imagine

my legs crossed, my hair combed, the shine of my boots

in the slatted light. I'm thinking My plant, his chair,

the ashtray that we bought together. I'm thinking This is where

we live. When we were little we made houses out of

cardboard boxes. We can do anything. It's not because

our hearts are large, they're not, it's what we

struggle with. The attempt to say Come over. Bring

your friends. It's a potluck, I'm making pork chops, I'm making

those long noodles you love so much. My dragonfly,

my black-eyed fire, the knives in the kitchen are singing

for blood, but we are the crossroads, my little outlaw,

and this is the map of my heart, the landscape

after cruelty which is, of course, a garden, which is

a tenderness, which is a room, a lover saying Hold me

tight, it's getting cold. We have not touched the stars,

nor are we forgiven, which brings us back

to the hero's shoulders and the gentleness that comes,

not from the absence of violence, but despite

the abundance of it. The lawn drowned, the sky оn fire,

the gold light falling backward through the glass

of every room. I'll give you my heart to make a place

for it to happen, evidence of a love that transcends hunger.

Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars

for you? That I would take you there? The splash

of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube? We've read

the back of the book, we know what's going to happen.

The fields burned, the land destroyed, the lovers left

broken in the brown dirt. And then's it's gone.

Makes you sad. All your friends are gone. Goodbye

Goodbye. No more tears. I would like to meet you all

in Heaven. But there's a litany of dreams that happens

somewhere in the middle. Moonlight spilling

on the bathroom floor. A page of the book where we

transcend the story of our lives, past the taco stands

and record stores. Moonlight making crosses

on your body, and me putting my mouth оn every оne.

We have been very brave, we have wanted to know

the worst, wanted the curtain to be lifted from our eyes.

This dream going оn with all of us in it. Penciling in

the bighearted slob. Penciling in his outstrechted arms.

Our father who art in Heaven. Our father who art buried

in the yard. Someone is digging your grave right now.

Someone is drawing a bath to wash you clean, he said,

so think of the wind, so happy, so warm. It's a fairy tale,

the story underneath the story, sliding down the polished

halls, lightning here and gone. We make these

ridiculous idols so we can to what's behind them,

but what happens after we get up the ladder?

Do we simply stare at what's horrible and forgive it?

Here is the river, and here is the box, and here are

the monsters we put in the box to test our strength

against. Here is the cake, and here is the fork, and here's

the desire to put it inside us, and then the question

behind every question: What happens next?

The way you slam your body into mine reminds me

I'm alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling,

and they're оnly a few steps behind you, finding

the flaw, the poor weld, the place where we weren't

stitched up quite right, the place they could almost

slip right into through if the skin wasn't trying to

keep them out, to keep them here, оn the other side

of the theater where the curtain keeps rising.

I crawled out the window and ran into the woods.

I had to make up all the words myself. The way

they taste, the wy they sound in the air. I passed

through the narrow gate, stumbled in, stumbled

around for a while, and stumbled back out. I made

this place for you. A place for to love me.

If this isn't a kingdom then I don't know what is.

So how would you catalog it? Dawn in the fields?

Snow and dirty rain? Light brought in in buckets?

I was trying to describe the kingdom, but the letters

kept smudging as I wrote them: the hunter's heart,

the hunter's mouth, the trees and the trees and the

space between the trees, swimming in gold. The words

frozen. The creatures frozen. The plum sauce

leaking out of the bag. Explaining will get us nowhere.

I was away, I don't know where, lying оn the floor,

pretending I was dead. I wanted to hurt you

but the victory is that I could not stomach it. We have

swallowed him up, they said. It's beautiful. It really is.

I had a dream about you. We were in the gold room

where everyone finally gets what they want.

You said Tell me about your books, your visions made

of flesh and light and I said This is the Moon. This is

the Sun. Let me name the stars for you. Let me take you

there. The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar

cube... We were in the gold room where everyone

finally gets what they want, so I said What do you

want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I am

leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome

burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,

my silent night, just mash your lips against me.