holding_hands_and_loss lycanthrope in the distance, the moon has either waxed, or waned, but to us who have been distracted in earth and streetlights it is desolately halved: neither the geometric infinity of full, or the enlightened diminishing of slivered. And we are sitting in my car and we are not facing each other because it is the most we can say as two people who, like most, are not yet ready for true silence. Was it that weeks ago I laughed at her father? Or that years ago her father laughed at her? Was it the pulsing chill of unfettered winter that strangling out mammalian ultimatems? Or do I always just get the joke too late? Did the movie or the pasta not sit well when she said dismissively, "you've liked the word foreshortening a lot ever since that art museum we went to." I defensively told her i heard a teacher use it. i did not laugh and say wryly, "from now on I'll have to invent words like you do" as i would've to those who are games to me of less fear and longing, a group which includes my friends and sister and mother (though not my father who, deceased, becomes my opposite of love, as ludicrous and serious and unliveable) And now we look out at the matrix of stars and rain and city lights smearing on the windshield, we look to meet each other's gaze coming back around from the other side of the world so we don't feel lacking. Out there we can use whatever words we want for love - hate, strategy, foreshortening, fool or words even sweeter and more doddering than baby or honey, infantile coos. And out there her arguments must only be understood at the level of an unentered jungle, an obstacle on a larger map. This comfort is a lie, her sneers, her smiles, her face when it orgasms, all exist in me more than stars do. each wound becomes a doubt, each mess becomes regret, a hope for maybe next time, a better idea. yet in that wilderness, all lovers find a perimeter and most dare not leave it. yet tonight i am lost in it and it in me, lost in boundries, reminded of them. out the window we gaze for other options, because though i am stuck with my words, she is not stuck with them, it is up to me to revise. we hold hands and only break concentration to turn up the radio. she is the more quiet one, and i realize that there is more in my hands than i can realize - the only science of love, is editing it down to myths. if there were not echo and leda and orpheus, i'd only have the glaring moon, some maxim muttered in hemlock breath: lonliness cannot be beaten, but only forgotten. Tomorrow, in the brightly contested sun - fieldtrips will be taken to museums where dinosaurs and mammoths will be presented as a world that wasn't to be, a stepping stone away from lizards who could only know what was necessary and want nothing more. Tomorrow, a baby will cry, spill orange juice. a mother will hush it, and with a patience only to be experienced by the child again in nostalgia, look into its eyes and try to clean it up. Candidates for mayor or president or father will debate the issues on tv but will not speak on how i feel as if i can no longer breath. i'll imagine those lessons with my father in the stars. and even we, for our part, cannot remember when breathing became so forced- all we can muster now is to wait for tomorrow for something must come, all we can muster is to assure each other with our hands that this is as close as we'll ever be to holding our own hearts, to feeling our hands mirrored. as i kneel against you, my shoulder pins your tears and i know we will never be done saying goodbye- no stars can fill us, we need someone who knows our oldest name, our souls will be incomplete shrines, our kiss like the past and future, agonizing and almost there. 031105 ... Syrope i wonder if it's always that your hand fits most perfectly with your first love's hand. when i think about us, i can't even remember any individual times we held hands...that's something i wish i could remember. thankfully i do remember that you made my hand feel safe. your fingers intertwining with mine was something i never got tired of feeling, of marveling at, of needing. "There are few things sadder in this life than watching someone walk away after they've left you, watching the distance between your bodies expand until there's nothing... but empty space and silence." - someone like you 040125 what's it to you? who go blather from