Undated.

It is already summer. I had hoped for mornings spent sweating into your arms and onto your chest but instead I bleed into my brain with all the things left undone and unsaid, there was never enough time because I never envisioned the leaving coming so soon. Or maybe I stopped waiting. Or maybe I have better things to do. Or maybe you never liked me anyway. Maybe you were slow. Maybe I was impetuous. Maybe your arms never got around me. Maybe I am a master of escape. Maybe I always knew better. Maybe I don't have a clue. I can philosophise in a million directions, I can map the expanse of your shoulders in the grey morning light, we can fill the space between us with something thick and sweet and watch each other drown, I can spend the last stretch of my expiring youth fancying that I wasn't wrong and that you felt it too, I can slide headlong into winter and away from all this but I don't forget. I forgive but I don't forget.

May 16, 2008.

London is drifting into summer after a too-long and too-dark winter. I thought by now my longing would be over but not quite, not yet, every time I think I've gotten to the bottom of it there's one more level of want. My veins and arteries are exposed, laid out in beautiful patterns on the pavement and spilling into the gutter, you idly step over them while doing something else the way you subconsciously dodge puddles of vomit on a shiny Friday night street. I am bleeding, I am bleeding, I am bleeding because you never bled for me. A yellow moth settled on my eyes the morning before and whispered its warning that I chose to ignore, I should really be more careful, I should take my cues from buzzing insect symphonies instead of my own misguided misaligned and so often stupid heart. It's only ever gotten me into trouble and seems to want to march to its own broken watery death.

August 20, 2007.

I have been imagining myself in a room that's dark with heavy curtains blocking out the daylight, like the ones you tend to find in American road hotels. The corners and edges of the curtains are glowing with the bright light outside. I'm sitting in a chair across from the window - it's one of those mass-produced uncomfortable chairs that I find hard to believe were meant for use by human beings - and I'm staring at the curtain and watching the light bang and rattle against the other side. I can feel the chair's rough polyester upholstery under my hands, I can feel the hard narrow arm rests. I'm not comfortable. I get up with a certain amount of effort and throw the curtains open. Everything comes alive with blazing white light. It is warm. I close my eyes.

July 3, 2008.

Last night I was surprised by the phrase "You look lovely in this light" when I was sitting in that rough little pub, the phosphorescent street light pouring in the windows and splashing all over everything, the fat candle and its tiny flame flickering in the crystal bowl and tossing a flurry of yellow shapes over the wooden table. I half-mumbled "Doesn't everybody" because it's true, everybody does, that lighting makes us all so deceptively soft and inviting and shadows fall so delicately, honey tones of hair and skin compete for low-contrast dominance, skin beatified and flaws all rinsed away. My mind wandered off to the first time I saw you, in that dark place with pale light that always seems to leak in from a direction you can't quite identify, and how your mouth was moving and sounds were coming out but I was so lost in the collision of your features and tilt of your head and wondered if your eyes/nose/eyebrows/skin had planned to dance in that configuration or if it was just some grand genetic accident. Either way I was grateful to be their captive audience.

August 16, 2007

There are two people sitting across from me in this cafe and I'm pretty sure they're breaking up. It's difficult to watch, I want to lean over and tell them to work it out work it out work it out, if not for each other then for you and me. There's a loose end dangling where you used to be and sometimes it drags along the ground and
hurts
like
hell.