By the time I got to New York...

Disillusioned.
I think that was the word I used.
This concept of the real
and Sartre’s transcendental I –
something about how I can just rise above the singular inner-body human experience.
This was my best friend’s idea
of changing my emotional address.

I think the most staggering thing
the worst feeling
is the solitary.
That moment where you realize –
while sifting through your music collection
and all those books upon your overloaded shelf
and all those television shows that people say
rotted. your. brain.
since you were too young to conceptualize time –
that none of these scoops in the river
have yielded a precious gem of experience
to decorate your radically pierced heart with.

I still get my mail.
Because moving didn’t really mean leaving.

Winter stole summer's thrill.

I.
She says I handle these things better
but I’m just really calm.
The eye watches with dismay from the centre
while things crumble around it.
We’ve been star-separated lovers
since this mess with the sublime
feeling of purpose began.
it’s like Lady Fate had lost all her bets
made with Lady Luck
so she folded on the best two-pair she ever had.
I swear
while my heart travels through all the horrors of
this unknown world
my mind will weave a tapestry stronger
than Atropos’ shears.

II.
1am and I’m shaving
can’t sleep with mind
raceracing thoughts through
jumbled in a cloud like
“Why is everything in its current
positon?”
fuck me if I can’t take a joke
she laughs and tells me that can be arranged.
but the joke’s punchline strikes
before the setup starts.

III.
Recovery to re-cover the tattered upholstery no longer covering.
I am furniture:
When you visit, I am a simple comfort, outdated. In need of new colours.
New patterns.
Stitched together like a quilt – a thread of tea-stained will.
I am a fever:
Pitched aside like hay for feeding, warm inside a consumer.
New harvest.
Sprout.
We have not yet decided if our crops
had been drowned, or perhaps the sky has sobbed
just enough.