There will be dishes to do,

 The moon will rise,

 And everyone you love will be safe.

   James Longenbach, "Thursday"

1.

My life becomes too dirtied

With the concept of association:

I can’t sleep and the sky’s color

Flips over and over. Objects

In the backseat are bungee cords,

Forgotten Christmas decorations, stray

Hot-sauce packets. In your apartment,

They are your brand-new home’s brand-new

Furnishings. Old photos of us collude

With our travels’ memento seashells

2.

To produce my very own private burlesque.

Especially on those lonely nights

When I found myself abruptly

In the presence of another by their hugs,

Consolatory palms on my shoulder,

Or the occasional sensual pressure

Against my body, I was able to clearly see

Only the outlines of my closest loved ones.

I interrogated the empty spaces between

3.

Their fingers: Can’t we find a more holistic

Approach? Imagine the essence

Of otherness. Piecing together

Your makeshift understanding

Of the person sleeping beside you,

You are insufficient. Soon, again,

We’ll be alone with the past:

If you could be any kitchen utensil

What would you be? I would be anything

That fed you to fullness. We invested

In marred secondhand silverware

For your empty drawers, saw parts

 

4.

Of ourselves on their cloudy surfaces.

In this way, your presence and absence

Became interchangeable, our bodies’

Edges blooming into a tangle of lines.

Even now, language cannot help us,

With its too many imperfect pronouns:

5.

Ourselves, ourselves, ourselves.

Because of the human soul’s bounty

Of contradictions, we wanted

To determine which day

Would be our last, laying tarot cards

On the table that would have been ours

6.

A month ago. As you slept,

I was pacing that hot apartment,

Your fans spinning fast.

I thought I heard in the noise

Sublime sounds, orchestral,

A faint, echoing falsetto

Insisting para siempre.

But when one focuses

On such tricks of the mind,

Only single-minded whirring.

There must be more time

To be worked to create

The music we need most