Absurdities
for Matt
Because we love everything,
it feels like everything loves us back.
When we’re walking past beautiful
mint-green houses and making up lives
about greek columns and what it’d be like
to have a covered porch in a storm,
you point up at one with your umbrella,
and there is a man juggling in the only lit
window on the whole block
and we jump up and down until he
sees us across the street and takes a bow
and we’re laughing with rain on our teeth.
Our hair is slick to our foreheads and necks,
and the tawny leaves are cold on our ankles
as if stamps someone licked and stuck on us,
only drying off in the used poetry section,
counting how many Whitmans there are
and there are too many Whitmans
and too few of you. But I love his poem:
I Sing The Body Electric. That’s how it feels
when we’re getting screamed at
on the light rail or sharing a coffee ice cream
in the darkest six p.m. either of us have ever seen.
Matt you’ve never once told me to stop
when I’m having my bad ideas because you
think everything will work out
and it’s a chronic condition but I don’t
wish you austere. I just wish you were
here, talking with your hands and telling me
to let someone break my heart just one more
time. Last night, I was at a reading
burning my tongue on lavender tea
and there was this boy playing
with the soft ends of a girl’s hair
sitting in the seat in front of him,
a viola case on her lap. I couldn’t
tell if they knew each other or if
that is how they know each other:
two strangers in wobbly chairs
facing the stage’s makeshift music.
I wonder what people thought we
were, when we were being funny
on the side walk and sitting on the
turquoise linoleum floor dripping
onto a yellowy copy of Whitman,
when I wrote a note to you
in wet black ink on the
inside cover. Because we love
everything, it feels like everything
loves us back even when it’s bad,
even when it’s terrible and we’re
shivering and there’s no time
to say when we grow up…
because we’ve grown up
and there are not as many hours
left as when you first got off
on the platform and asked
what we should do. How many
ways are there to tell your friends
you love them? Not enough. Matt,
let me try again. That night,
we were the most moon we’ve ever
been. I like so much to walk with you
in the mist. One day, I’ll tell you to not
get on the plane.