Things That Could've Been

things that could've been

for once i’m writing something pretty with no twists or crooked lines. this is what happened after all the pages went blank and all the endings happened in a way that was bearable. no one got left behind. no words left to say. just something simple, the spin of seasons from spring to summer to fall to winter and over again. it’s living with someone for years without ever getting tired of them. staring out the same window without thinking the view would be better somewhere else. maybe don’t call this love; call this contentment, being able to stay in one place in one house and one home. no poetry here in the ritual of every day life; hang the laundry out to dry, feed the animals and wash the dishes by hand. it’s talking to someone without screaming and whispering without still being too loud. say hope without being sarcastic. loving someone not because they saved you or because they were your hurricane heart, but because they made the pages fit together in a way that seemed reasonable. you could puzzle your logic out and it happened to be bearable. just this thought, even.

COUSINS IN THE SUMMER

red lipstick & chlorine. a flower headband. eight dollars on the dresser with bobby pins crossed for luck. bathing suits & the smell of sunscreen, an almost rainstorm walking home. the sound before the thunder comes crashing in, that empty silence. & then: the rain.

can i have a story about a girl who loves a girl 
because she’s got paint splattered all over her arms 
and a smear of sharpie across her face connecting the freckles, 
books falling out of her arms and hair in her mouth running late to class 
laughing as she spits it out.

can i have a story about a boy 
who loves a boy because of the marks 
his lab goggles leave around his eyes, 
dark like he hasn’t slept for weeks 
too in love with it to stop, 
measurements and quotes written in all of his pockets 
because he always forgets 
but he won’t ever let anyone else think they are not worth it.

can i have a story about somebody who loves somebody because they are intelligent, because they are kind.

can i have a story about a girl 
who loves a girl who runs touchdowns 
on the football field and writes 
as fast as her feet move, 
pen never lifting from the paper because her thoughts just keep 
pouring out.

can i have a story about a boy 
who loves a boy who used to be in love 
but he got hurt. 
real bad. 
so bad he thought he couldn’t love anymore, 
couldn’t tell anyone because they wouldn’t believe him 
because how could he let someone do that to him? 
and he couldn’t tell them that you don’t ever let someone.

can i have a story about a boy who isn’t always a boy 
and a girl who isn’t always a girl 
so they say use fae, use ze. 
sometimes they are nothing and sometimes they are everything 
and love is all that is in between.

can i have a story about somebody who loves somebody who is strong, somebody who is brave.

can i have a story about a boy and a boy 
and a girl and a girl 
and another boy and two other girls 
and everyone is still in love, 
girlsgirlsboysboysgirlsboys 
because nobody ever said love was just two.

can i have a story about a boy and a boy who never kiss. 
can i have a story about a girl and a girl 
where they don’t fall into bed.

can i have a story about somebody in love with more than one somebody and that doesn’t mean they love anybody a little bit less because that’s not what love means. can i have a story about somebody who’s not in love at all.

can i have a story about a girl who loves everyone for who they are, or a boy who loves boys and girls and thinks everyone is pretty.

can i have a story about a boy who didn’t think he could be strong, trying to hide in oversized clothes and bound bandages.

can i have a story about a girl who thought she’d never be pretty, putting on her sister’s makeup in a corner mirror and taking it off before she came home.

can i have a story about somebody who loves anybody they like and somebody who loves boys and girls.

can i have a story about boys and girls who used to be and love who they are now.

can i have a story where in the end the punch line is not AND THE QUEER ONES DIED and instead it’s a story about how they lived and how there are different kinds of love other than the ones they always told you about, how people are more than just a single story.

tell me a story about the world where we are more than just a story, more than just a body hanging from a tree. more than a boy painted red and a girl blue in the face from screaming and somebody faceless hiding in the dark.

god, i want a story with a happy ending and something good. i want this life to be bearable.

can i have a story about love without boundaries, no end to dreaming in the infinite skies reflected through all of us rainbows scattering across the prisms of our hearts. can i?

and the world says, write it.

WRITE IT :: o.m. 2016

like a sunrise in reverse

i could believe in a fate / where none of

this happened / there are worse things

/ than making it up as we go / than

headlights driving south / and a song

like waves crashing into a cliff /

singing of oblivion / and the hope inside

it / the way the headlights / shine down

the road in front of us / curving around

the mountainside / we drive into the

abyss / and we are swallowed by the light

/ of passing possibility / eighty miles an

hour / headlights / glorious and merciful

and bright.

tell him that there are other ones and zeroes

10100 / 101 / 1100 / 1100 1000 / 1001 / 1101 10100 / 1000 / 1 / 10100 10100 / 1000 / 101 / 10010 / 101 1 / 10010 / 101 1111 / 10100 / 1000 / 101 / 10010 1111 / 1110 / 101 / 10011 1 / 1110 / 100 11010 / 101 / 10010 / 1111 / 101 / 10011 00000000000000000000000000000 1111111111111111111111111111111111111111

recovery and frank sinatra

snow on telephone wires and fifteen years of weathering this winter. i cannot believe i have made it to this day, a future in advance, waiting to see which way this life unfolds. 
an old phonograph scratches at the record’s ends, static over roof tops, sound waves breaking through crescents of white. a wave through foam and bursting colours. 
i keep asking the same questions over and over and i guess that’s what keeps me living, trying to find the answer. is that what Jean meant when he said, who am i? without and within. music, piano fading so i flip the record. 
frank sinatra and i have learned a lot together. we know what happens when you fall in love, when you fall out, in between. we go together, him and i 
through these telephones and microphones and static, empty nights. 
outside it’s cold, enough that the table shakes with it even, the house trembling in the wind. we are fragile but somehow still standing if that is a miracle. 
someone left the door open and now everything’s come in. i don’t try to stop it anymore and they sit quiet, listen to the record play while the snow falls. in this way we have learned to wear the days together and now fifteen years later i am still standing, frank sinatra in my hand, before i sit and listen until i fall asleep.