from City of Moths

  

Wait, I have a question, is a man, severed from his own shadow, covered by the Death and Dismemberment Plan? I only ask because I live in the forest, and lately, light can’t find its way through the pines. Okay, for the sake of full disclosure, I’m afraid a woman has split my heart like firewood. Take me off speaker-phone for a second. Can you speak to the third-party for me directly? Good, write this down: Why does your love always feel like fumbling for condoms, as if it was your own fear that was fucking you? The way one enters the ocean with a simultaneous sense of both arrival and exile. Do you still pretend to love what you’re afraid to love? The day you left, you became a great white bird and the rain came like a forgotten promise. Now turn around and sail into your ultimatum. I hope you’re getting this all down.

It’s true, you were young, and someone might’ve taken advantage of such anxiety and confusion. Someone might have said “Here, take this handgun, cradle it, be confident but don’t think about what you are doing, point it at the heart of what you want to kill; here are your silver bullets, here is his fairytale trust. When the moment arrives, don’t apologize for your anxiety, no, no, you are the doll-maker, the empress of holes, you’ll leave your name like a calling card.” But you’re older than that now, and girls your age don’t play with dolls anymore. There’s no treason as true as the holes you left. No season to help us heal. Summer inside the two dolls has wound down.

Drowning, it turns out, is not difficult. Bodies in deep water lie in complete darkness. The ambiguous ambiguous. One must learn to lose, because eventually everything runs past you and away from you. Like the minnows made angry at all we do. The dead often surface in spring. I am a flower. My name is doubled-over. “Weight” you say, and that is the soul’s only argument. And all the little fish wear white gloves and swim past us.

forgive us our trespasses. I am not a good person. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me we are the only 2 people in the world. That the poem will end when we die. I apologize for the future. Which is why I’m building a spaceship in the woods. I am going on a journey where all possible outcomes will end in fire. No need to wave when I fly over. This time there will be no knock. I will enter you through the door in your desire.

We remain, your absence and I. It turns out it was me that was making all that pink noise. Translating something so fragile there is no way to deny it wasn’t the whore of the invisible. I didn’t say “something died inside me.” The crows go crazy outside. Jealous of my black pool.

I write like I’m staring at a mountain. Waiting for something red and too true to fall. I am afraid. I am afraid of what I know and what I don’t. Something flees me like frightened horses. Do you feel it? I have this picture of you where something is escaping, and inside your eyes there are birds frozen in a Chinese fan. You look as if you’ve just said something beautiful or criminal. I cradle your apology in my hands as if to sip from it.

For a long time now, we have been at war with the sea. I can see how she must seem blue and at peace from an outside eye. But that’s all advertising. The problem is the sea is perceived with the wrong sense. It’s an illusion; the image is an imprecise language. No, it’s the scent, the saline, seaweed and tungsten we’re after. And don’t be fooled by the sound, she is actually noiseless. I should explain the matter of the waves, it’s quite complicated, but…you must yield to compliance. Would I lie to you? She is more than her names, or the sum of the fears and joys she invokes. She exists, I swear, I see her everywhere! She has been sent from somewhere far away to seduce and terrify. When you come you will see for yourself. We will walk together and look at her. We will take deep breaths of the salty air, and I am sure, with you there, we will not be afraid.