may 30th 2024

i haven’t spoken to esme in a number of months and when i try, it’s a text message meme that she doesn’t respond to or a stray like under a twitter post about boston. i took a shot at polite conversation about her girlfriend in her 30s (“great”) but i heard a week later that they’d broken up. i didn’t keep up with her well, i admit that. i didn’t know how. i recognize her avoidance from second semester last year when dirty laundry piled so high in her room that we stayed out for our sake. this year she wouldn’t see me until she left for florida and i forgot the sound of her voice, how she knew what to say in every instance, navigating the conversation to cronenberg or baz luhrmann’s elvis or a textpost or vintage geopolitics. once she couldn’t forgive how you treated me and now she satisfies your second last.fm follow, dispatching indie bands into your playlist. when we met you’d listen to albums entirely through (“records”) and never individual songs, and you appraised paper bag by fiona apple to be “no good— i could’ve written this.” i think you lauded yourself as a swiftie in the final months to goad me and catch me misogynistic. i didn’t see her there and i wondered if you broke up with your girlfriend, or vice versa. in fairness you could be listening to her cds.

on your bed, under the crimson light of your t-shirt over the wall fixture, i showed you be the cowboy and puberty 2. i sat cross-legged with my head on your shoulder and my eyes shut like i was praying, and your arms reached around me to claim what you could. your body and mine coalesced in rhythm with the instrumental swells. you were cheating on her and i didn’t know how to stop you, or how to draw upon the strength not to want your heart beating out of your skin. we kept there for five minutes or half an hour. despite the threat of tomorrow i tailored a fantasy that we could stay there until we died. i don’t remember how it ended. i’m sure petra came home from somewhere, you brought me to the door, and i said, i’ll see you.

not even in night visions did i pretend you could marry me. yours ran free with everything i forbade myself. i wonder what you dressed me in. i think i’d like to wear an antique if i could find one for a reasonable price. a rental is cheaper but i hoard object memories. white is classic but i would risk a pink, a red, a gothic black to the inadvertent but very real detriment of my mother. rather than a bouquet i’ve considered a sword to knight my lover. more cliché. you would’ve liked it to be pietistical, a small gathering in a chapel, friends present if we took time to invite but perhaps more romantic if no one attended. a vegas affair.

i wish i didn’t remember you’re living. i wish you’d cease and take back the living you’ve already done. i am easiest when unburdened by misplaced sentiments. i am happiest without you. petra says we’re on diverging journeys, separate wavelengths. there may not be nothing left of you, because you are somewhere. when does that fade? god, i’m waiting, i’m doing what i can.