The Letting Go (a project of sorts):

LOVE COMES TO ME
---
Without any words, you hand me a leaf. It is brittle enough to splinter immediately at my touch. I avert my eyes down to the cracked sidewalk beneath us, and you lick your lips. They are very dry. You ask me what I am doing tonight and I say "nothing", and then we are sitting by the river and we share a cigarette and I find myself thinking that you are sort of interesting.

STRANGE FORM OF LIFE
---
If the night air reeked of anything, it was possibility. There was no sign of anybody at all nearby, but I felt a strange stirring in my bones. The only sound that tore through the stillness was my own ragged breath, but I sensed that the hour was charged with something rare. All I could smell was deadened rain and it made me feel wickedly drunk.

WAI
---
In Catholic church, we used to reach out our skinny fingers during communion and trace them over the heavy fur coats of women passing by. These women were going forward to receive tiny pieces of stale white bread, along with a shot of stiff red wine. They always seemed to us, crouched back in the rigid pews of wood, impossibly old and even more boring. Instead of being gifted this food and drink, we dragged our feet forward to be blessed instead; a rough hand brushing our foreheads and the barely suppressed laughter shared between us. Week after week after month after a slice of childhood.

CURSED SLEEP
---
The only aspect of my beautiful new apartment that I hated was the fact that I found sleep terrifying. It was continually fitful; drenched with the grime of ghosts (I realize it sounds laughable, but they were absolutely ghosts) that laid their tongues and their fingers of discontent all over me. They held elaborate dinner parties in my dining room, hung like hovering birds over me in the darkness of my bedroom, ran their spiky fingers all over the walls, and generally just fucked my head up. For some reason, they were always female, always long and dishevel-haired, and always tireless.

NO BAD NEWS
---
I regretted only the placement of my body at that point. I was twisted over a haggard park bench, evergreen trees draping on all sides, and a tile of grass beneath me. There was not even so much as a stick within reach, never mind the possibility of anything sharper. Where was the knife; the gun; the rope? I thought that I might throw up, and then I did. When I peel myself back up off the ground wet with my devastation, the supply of potential weapons is looking no better. I call my mother and dissolve into tears.

COLD AND WET
---
The champagne shrieks open and into glasses that are anorexically thin. Voices lift and fall, twining from room to separate room. The crackling liquid snakes its way down my throat with startling ease. I feel my tired limbs shiver and then loosen. We wander down the Crescent, happy and stupid and far beyond the stage of caring about anything. The scent of Fall creeping into the last lingering stretch of August mixes with the lightness of what we are drinking, and all I can taste is release.

BIG FRIDAY
---
It is late, very late, and we sit curled in the corner of an after-hours Thai restaurant. Save for a pair of elderly men arguing over the crossword and two girlishly young waitresses whispering behind the bar, we are alone. We shovel curry slowly between our lips and you ask me if I have ever thought that love is not real. I say that I have, all the time actually. This causes us both to lock eyes and relax into laughter. You hand me a shoddily-wrapped gift (it is my birthday, after all) and it is a book of poetry. All of the poems are about love and most of them are also accompanied by whimsical little drawings. A fresh wave of laughter pulls me into itself and I kiss you across the table.

LAY AND LOVE
---
We stretch out on the living room floor, three bodies untouching yet close enough to still exchange breath. We throw this old record on, and I don't quite know why, but all the lights are completely off. The music seeps over us like a humid wind, catching us vulnerable. Nobody speaks for a very long time, and I am glad.

THE SEEDLING
---
Under a heap of scarves and sweaters stashed in the crevices of your closet (I was cold and looking for a blanket one gray afternoon) I come across a graveyard of photos. They are from a different time, and your happiness in them makes me gasp. I knew I would find these somewhere, at some point, but regardless--their existence, right here in my hands right now, knives me like ice through the heart. I sift through them all, of course, and my head starts to ache and then I throw them back, further than they were before, under the pile of clothing. I swallow the feeling of blood crawling up in my throat, wrap an afghan over my shaky shoulders, and walk back into the living room with a smile curving. I collapse my frame back against yours on the couch, and you pull me more tightly into you as you unpause the movie. I feel an eerie sense of calm.

THEN THE LETTING GO
---
As soon as I lay eyes on the Arctic Ocean, I know that this separation is real. We are on our own individual planets. You take a slender piece of gold from the pocket of your cardigan, turn in over in your fingers a few times with a troubled look flecking your eyes. Without warning (you seem to even catch yourself off guard), you fling the shit out of the small object way, way into the tossing water. I steal a glance as you press your hands against your face for a long, despairing moment, then turn as if ripping yourself away from the scene of what you have just done (just ended) and walk away, a little too quickly, so that i know you are willing yourself not to cry. As I watch you tread away from me against moss and rock, I know that I should care but I don't. This gesture was meant to bring us towards one another, but instead all I want to do is set off running in the opposite direction you have gone.

GOD'S SMALL SONG
---
There was this flimsy nest of sparrows in our back yard in the country. It was this year, this summer. I was (and I am) twenty-five years old. The birds that we found here were hours out of the shell; wet with newness and eyes still painted shut. They screeched soundlessly for food, and I felt this sickening fear because their nest was very very low to the ground; far too low. I stood there watching them in fascination and helplessness for about an hour, or maybe more. When I came back the next morning, the nest was empty. I still think about it sometimes.

I CALLED YOU BACK
---
I licked your hand and it tasted of sweat. I tried my own and it tasted the same.

Good night and good luck,
With love,
RB.