I know it sounds crazy, so feel free to lock me up, but I swear I can literally feel myself coming closer to death every time that I think of you.
Letter IV
I cannot love you.
Driving myself insane one step at a time with
each breath that passes through
my lips that I envision kissing you.
I cannot love you.
Back and forth are the meaningless
messages that coddle me through
every waking moment that I envision being with you.
I cannot love you.
With trudging confessions tying
each delicate fiber of your being soon to be drowning
creating a fear that you envision with me.
I cannot love you.
As there are dreams to be lived
without chains, lead, and endless aches
breaking a wall that you envision with me.
I cannot love you.
Rose without thorns- suffocating
weeds commandeering the life
meant to be tamed that you envision in me.
I cannot love you.
Holding onto to universes passed
heartfelt letters, necklaces, rings
promises that I envisioned to keep with you.
I cannot love you.
I cannot love you.
I envisioned, loving every inch of you.
Letter III
I’m going on a date with her. You’re glad.
And somehow I’m caught in between-;
she’s not the one I talk to everyday, that’s you.
She’s got her stuff together. She’s saving for a house, has a
full time job, loves literature, a seamstress, creative, and positive.
And I’m thinking of the dysfunctional, self-inflicting harm-;
you.
Time passes, and we’ve had these altercations before-;
as if a dizzying, annoying, sea-sick merry-go-round
I love you, I hate you- wait-
two years of silence and it begins again.
I’ve proposed, you panic. “we’ve never had a relationship”
Okay. Breathe, recollect.
5 more years of silence.
I’m going on a date with her. You’re glad.
And somehow I want to die-;
we never happened, and she’s gone.
She’s got her stuff together. She has a house, has a
career, loves literature, a seamstress, creative, positive.
And I’m thinking of the dysfunctional, self-inflicting harm-;
us.
5 more years of silence.
Letter II
I would compare Thee to a Summer’s day,
but you are not bright & cheerful, nor full of bees & picnics, and
swims at the lake.
I would write you 300 plus sonnets like Petrarch to Laura
but I have no magic in my words or faith to guide me through.
I would love you like no other, but there are so many types and ways to love,
and I have heard all the ones I can think of, and that I have a sense
to put on paper, and thus have nothing new to give to you
But I love you like a child likes Christmas.
I would leave you cookies and milk if I knew that you would come, or even if there were a chance.
I would dance with you, if you wanted to dance, and write you poetry, even though I hate my words, you may still like it, and I would take that chance.
I adore you like Emily adored Nature, and need you like Sylvia Plath needed suicide.
You are the air that I breathe, and I want to be that necessary and unnoticed like Atwood does in Sleep.
I would give you everything if I could give it-;
but this is reality.
I have but myself to give, and not even in a frame that you could find appealing, but still -
I will try as if a dog swimming after a log too far out in the ocean, desperate to play with it’s Master—
if you would but look my way, and smile.
I like intercourse. Let’s not make it fancy. So, scratch that, rewind, delete delete. I like to fuck. I like sex. Slow and loving, or rough, vigorous, bruising I-don’t-have-enough-blood-to-function-goddammit-I-just-lost-my-vision sex. Of course, I get discriminated for it. I’m so desensitized to comments such as “You’re going to hell” “You’re gonna get AIDS”. Sex is a Human function, and primal need. I’m not doing it to continue the species, plenty of people doing that, the world doesn’t need my help. Fuck, all that’s gonna be left for the next generations is grease bins, and they’ll dine with the crows. Sorry kids.
But I like sex. I can do without the complications of a relationship two-way street are-you-okay bothersome relationship. I have a hard enough time making sure I’m happy, let alone someone else. I care about friends, I care about family, cats, healthy eating, the environment, politics and terrorist bombings so much so, that I really don’t think I can handle another person’s luggage of 20 odd years in this, well, place.
But I like sex not for the crazy wild one night stands with a girl that I didn’t think I could get, or a six-beer-pretty, but because it gives me a closeness I can’t achieve any other way. For that brief moment, fingers everywhere, just wanting more, breathing heavy, I am as close to feeling alive as I have ever been. In that moment it’s a reverie that I am not only wanted, but needed viscerally. They cannot have this kind of fulfillment without me, and I cannot have it without them. Because during the day all the problems arise, and we distance ourselves with invisible plexi-glass walls because we don’t want to be a burden and don’t want more of them either.
But in sex, I’m all I was meant to be. I don’t need to have a degree, have a million dollars in the bank, or straight edged got-my-shit-together-I’m-a-real-man-now. I can just be, and so can they. And we need that, and it’s okay.
