ex tempore

It wasn’t my fault - I was asked to remember you.

Anyway, found this bit collecting dust among my drafts, so I thought I’d finally post. I remember this pain feeling, being very real, very raw. Now it, and you, seem so distant. Two and a half lifetimes ago, or at least two thirds the world away.

How long will you be a part of my poetry? How long until you no longer are? How long will I have to write until you are nevermore the blue blue ink that flows bluely from my pen? How long will I have to paint until I stop

trying

to mix those stock colours to match your eyes? How long will I have to dance until your voice ceases to be the only melody by which I am moved? How long? How long until my art belongs to me again?

I know that should that day come, it will be very lonely. But it’s all I have left and at least it will be mine.

I can confidently say you are no longer in my writing, in my poetry. You are, however, still part of my dancing. Sometimes I feel particularly performative offstage, just in rehearsal or class. Sometimes I realize this is due to an imagined gaze. Yours. Like the time you watched me learn a solo. There is now never a selfish solo for me. I either want to share it with you, or shove it in your face. Or, I don’t remember you at all. My fonder thoughts of you and I irrupt and lift me high enough to fly as I turn and twirl. You can follow the seams along my satin dreams and remember I was once a girl.

I wish there were more red brick buildings from where I grew up. They were pretty scarce in San Diego. Don’t get me wrong: adobe’s nice. It’s clean. It’s Californian and therefore relaxing. But sort of boring. I wanted more red brick buildings whose walls were half-covered in ivy, like bangs blown across a wise woman’s aged, lined face. There was one to my left the other day, to my left as I was walking north, walking north as if migrating. It’s summer now. No need to migrate. Here the gods above sigh and then there is wind, resuscitating, kissing the now gasping red brick face. It was breathing.

Adobe might be clean, but I don’t see it breathe.

From a technical point of view, I’m pretty sure my writing’s gotten worse since entering college. As in, I abuse All of The Commas, and, well, capitalize all of The Things.

BUT IT’S FINE I CAN STOP WHEN I WANT

“Do you ever like a fictional character so much you actually get jealous when other people say they like them?”

To which I say NO WHAT DO YOU MEAN I’M NOT JEALOUS HE’S MINE.