Lily - April 19th

For "Lily (My One and Only)"

You're holding the Future
Islands album I had just heard
under your arm like a book.
I ask if you've listened yet
& the questions ping back
& forward for hours.

We talk over Baskin-
Robbins scoops, not small
talk. Almost immediately
we make it clear we don't like idle
chat. I uphold the same decision
I made two years ago: be open,
bloody, crying, laughing
smooth, clumsy, myself.

I explain myself through
characters, round out who I am
besides my tastes and interests.
You've never seen Adventure-
land, the movie I practically star in.

All of this before we spoon
our first taste of ice cream.
Neither of us know why
we're talking. I frame my words
around my ex-girlfriend &, you,
your ex-boyfriend. Both of us

lonely? No, we're not
talking to each other, we are surrogates
for the missing. I am him, you are her.

"Don't let anyone tell you your sadness
isn't charming, Kyle." You make me feel
like a Smith's song. "If I'm Morrisey,
then you're The Cure."
The unfinished ice cream is a puddle
on the bottom of paper cups.

Before I know, I'm following you
to your place, listening to Naked
by David Sedaris. He's reading
from a story about an erotic book
he found and gave to his sisters.

We watch a version of me kiss Kristen
Stewart & work at a theme park.
I cry, you laugh. It's a great movie
with an enviable ending. I'm on the bed,
you're next to me in a chair. By the time
your television goes to screensaver,
we're both on opposite sides of the bed,

facing each other. I'm talking to the silhouette
of the only other person I've ever been
in bed with. You say I'm not attractive,
a rejection I have to reacquaint myself
with. You're not my type either,
we are both not the people we'd still love
to hear compliment us.

Then we're arguing over what poetry is.
You'd think that this is poetry, I think
this is garbage, a journal entry to keep
myself from overthinking and dismembering.

You ask me to close
my eyes, something I've avoided, to contain
the welling to the top half of my face.
I feel like Molly Wringwald in Sixteen Candles,
but don't try and tell me she didn't feel heat
from birthday candles and worry over burns.

You tell me to close
my eyes, say you're doing the same.
"Pretend we're talking to who we want
to talk to." As if you haven't been
replacing my features with his, as if I
haven't been tattooing your skin.

Suddenly, a kiss on the cheek and apology
for still wanting to touch him.
I feel nothing from it, except
bad because I didn't listen to you.

You wanted to be her for me, as I became him
for you. Just for the night. Sorry,
but I can't replace her, Lily, my one and only.

We listen to the album quietly, it's late.
You lay your head down on my legs
and look up at your smooth ceiling.
I miss the popcorn ceilings in the rooms
I slept in. This whole event: the meeting,
the ice cream, the drive, the movie,
the arguing, the goodbye peck
meant for someone else. Start to finish,
a relationship in a day.

I'm glad you found some closure in me,
Lily, if you did. My healing
might come in other forms later, but thank you,
for the moments I felt my voice
reaching far away ears again.

You walk me to the door, an act
I'm familiar with. We don't exchange
numbers, don't know our last names,
won't connect again unless by chance.
An unspoken agreement, we don't know
what all of this was, we know what it isn't.

The door shuts behind me like a hug,
I get in my car and am promptly
lost finding my way back home.
Finally spit out onto a road
I vaguely remember. Already writing line
breaks in my head for this poem
for you Lily, if any of this had happened.


— — —

Messages (unfinished draft)

The mornings when I open
my eyes, don't let it sink in
that my hands can't write
and my mouth can't call
just to say I'm glad
we're both alive. Even
if it's only half-true
& I wish I was still dreaming
about the versions  of you
that hate me, are cruel to me
but ones that are still
looking in my eyes.

Except on that night
when I dreamt you blind-
folded me.
I could hear you dancing,
the shifting of fabric.
Unseen, I still know the sounds
of your undressing.