Why were we so nervous?
All that time spent with butterflies, considering and reconsidering. Waiting. Configuring the correct combinations of words. Why?
If I could go back. If I could go back, and do it again, this is how I would do it. I would walk with my face set, my hair pulled up and pinned away from my skin, geometry textbook pressed to my chest. I would walk straight up to you and say it.

"If I could go back." How ridiculous. I do go back.

The best thing I ever did for myself: I was in 11th grade and I rode the bus late at night to him. After rehearsal, I called Max and asked him how to get to James' house. I took the 57 down Van Ness and changed at Union to the 1. That was the first time I'd ever taken that bus route; just a year later it became my afterschool activity. But this night I was lost and worried. I called my mother, "Ma, there is something I need to do."
I called him and said, come outside. I am outside.
He came down.
We stood in streetlamp glow and I kissed him. Said, goodbye.

"We talked about that a lot of after you did it." Pause.
"James and Simon and Jeremy, they all thought it was weird and creepy." Pause.
"I thought it was sweet." Break.




The more I drink, the more drunk I feel. Is this normal?
So okay, let's write some poetry together.
I made a whole life for us, it was written in three parts and the first part was called Now I Am a Part of You, pt. 1. But I won't package it up and send it to you, though I already burned it onto three blue blank discs, because I am embarrassed. That seems to be the theme of this post, and of my life: being embarrassed. I imagine what would be possible if I were to erase that word from my vocabulary, nullify it as possibility. I would take off my shirt. I would pinch my OWN NIPPLES. hahahahahaa

But listen to me, first. She miscarried. It's true! Lying dark at the bottom of the bowl, there is was. This is why I fill my lungs with smoke and this is why I take in as much cocaine as possible through each and every nostril. No, I lied. The reason is that I am so sad. Her miscarriage is just coincidence. Excuse.

But honestly none of this has to so with the image here. However, I did write you a poem when I was walking back from the gas station. It goes like this:
Mon coeur.
Mon propre coeur.
Je n'y arrive pas.

It's short & it sounds better in the original.

Well I was going to tell you about how I lay on my stomach for a while, trying to bring you to life, trying to bring myself to life with the contraction or uterine walls and release of oxytocin, your face the only image behind the lids of my eyes, but I was so fucking tired that I fell in and out of circular motion there, in and out of dreams. And when I, periodically, woke and began again, I was so confused. Where did he go. Whose hand is this? Should I stop and fall into the dream for real or should I continue this delusion, fuck. So anyway I'm unsatiated, and when I woke for real I was on my back and naked, and I thought you were here! And pulling myself up out of that hurt somewhere deep in my sternum. And I do that every morning, that pulling, that convincing: no, just a dream, again. No, no warm flesh against you, that sweat you're pooled in is simply your own. Oh, Eleanore, I'm sorry. I'm sorry you have to wake lonely and I'm sorry that it will be that way for a long time. I'm sorry it's so hard to fall into sleep these days. I'm sorry he runs through you like birds singing. I'm sorry there are so many possibilities and I'm sorry you finally gave up looking at flights online. Oh, Eleanore. I'm so sorry you did this to yourself.
So here is where the text connects to the imagery. Those shadows? Those belong to you and to him.
Eleanore, I know the tug. I know the lack. I know that your bones feel weightless and unhinged. I know that it's always, always, always nighttime for you, because daylight here belongs to the afterdark there; and vice-versa. Your mind finds him asleep; though honestly your sleeping mind is the only one which truly finds him. Last night you looked at books in the basement of his parents' library, didn't you? You undressed in the stacks and found him, poring over old pages. You came to him naked and perfect, your body lit by the golden shine of text, and he had you. He was everywhere, he was inside and he was outside and you came with a gulp and a cry out simultaneously, your hips spreadeagled and sweat mingling. You kissed his temples and held his face in your hands, oh Eleanore, I am sorry-sorry, but that was a dream. You still have the feeling of his beared on your fingertips; that beard no longer exists. I am sorry you are so sad. I am sorry that you sob your mind quiet at night. I am sorry that his absence is stronger than his presence, these days. I am sorry that he is far. You are sore, aren't you? You are sore. You ache all over, your mind a muscle that works too hard in the dark for him. And the hands of others, they burn on you. They are jokes that serve to remind of you what is missing.

I am sorry that the future can't exist. Plans are impossible, though you can't help but force the images of it into being.
You'll be happily exhausted next to him. One day. I can promise you nothing, but I will promise you this anyway: distances are easily shortened. The only thing you want is to touch him, I know this, but listen to me Eleanore: what is not now is not discounted in time to come.
No, even better: there is no such thing as time. It is fabrication!
Oh I know it's not enough just to see him and listen to him, a projection of pixles on a screen. But take what you can get and close off all other thoughts, baby girl. Oh Eleanore. I am so, so sorry. Your cheek aches for his chest, I know, stop crying you beautiful girl.
I'll stop; otherwise this will never end.
The point is, it's a physical ache I'm enduring over here. It has to do with the longings in my brain, but it is manifested in a real, actual pain in my chest. Oh baby, stop being a shadow, start being mine. I don;t want to wait! But I will. I will.