mygeeseourgeese | Entries tagged with theme: complicated relationships

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redcheekdays

how many times will you snap
my love like a wishbone?

is it sweeter at the marrow?

redcheekdays

i.
it’s both inconvenient and incredible that I only know how to write about you in motion. suspended somewhere between the chicago and buffalo airports, I can’t guess where I was as the blue ink smeared itself all over my right hand and the pounding in my skull became more than an annoyance. I think that’s fitting.

ii.
you mentioned once that you dreamed of traveling, taking a plane not going to buffalo or chicago but to a place I can’t pronounce. I think that’s fitting too. I suppose I’m really only able to write about you in motion because when I close my eyes you are never in one place. you’re blurred. driving your white car down that dark road, speeding until I could see myself dying and not caring one bit. nudging a book across a table with scarred palms. eyes that would dart from my cheek to the floor, from my hands to the door.

iii.
if we’re being honest and sincere like I’m trying to be, I’ve yet to discover where in this endlessly rotating cycle I have the means to love you. right here, I don’t. not in the catastrophic way I know that I could. but, at the same time, too many of my atoms have invested themselves into waiting for you than to give up on sunflowers and being more than that girl from the spring before everything changed.

iv.
granted, I’m also positive that there’s more than simply empty space between point a and point b, but neither of us are naive enough to dive into something so hopelessly uncharted. actually, maybe I am. maybe I shouldn’t be.

v.
all I really know is that every night, around 3:30am, I wake up with my palm pressed gently into the area connecting my neck to my shoulder blade. this, this is where we exist. this is where I try to find you.

redcheekdays

I will drop everything I am holding.
I will steal the first car I see &

chase the kite string down to your hand.
Perhaps by then I will have forgotten your face.

We will not recall events beginning with a curled eyelash
& ending in grocery lists of what we could have done

differently. You may go by a different name in a new city
wear a life carved out in the shape of my absence

or make a bed with someone else.
But when the alarm sounds I will cross every border,

skip every checkpoint & dodge all bullets in memory
of what we would once have done to discern

the exact form of desire. I will come to you, gasping
& dry-mouthed as before, wearing the future around

my neck. & nothing else. I will not care if you bring
your new bedfellow or a dog hell-bent

on alerting treasure hunters to signs of life.
It does not even matter where we are headed.

There is no pain like the pain of a gulf blooming
between two sides of the same hand. There is no grief

like praying to a ghost that refuses to stay buried.
The earth fissuring each time I put you back

in it: splitting image of how the planet shuddered
when our first escape routes converged. The same way

it surrenders, now, to the unfathomable. These
crevices are nothing like the graves we built

for each other. These fires cannot touch us when
we have perfected the art of immolation. How even

death is a shadow of forgetting. We have worn it
like skin, offered the fresh peel

at our first meeting. At our last. & now the afterworld
as we know it: beyond our invention. As it has always

been. You’re not forgiven, but neither am I.
The world is ending

& we have been here before.

redcheekdays

Because that is what love is, after all, isn’t it?
The nagging, guilty feeling you get after
you wish someone were dead.

redcheekdays

Is it too aggressive of me to say
I want to rip the past into shreds?
I cannot change how I feel,
and you cannot change
how catastrophically this ended.

I do not want to remember —
not you, not how my heart
heals differently now,
not the gaps in the way
I approach people since you.
I want you to stop existing in the past
as easily as you stopped existing in my future.

redcheekdays

Dear beloved.
Dear betrayer.
Dear Judas.

I was born into this cell. Don’t blame yourself. Your middle name was destiny, and besides, my father has been waiting for me all this time. I was on loan to this simple earth. It was never going to last.

As the pain drives itself into my palms, it shall not hurt me. I’ll remember your token of love on my lips, and taste you still. You taught me so many things, and the one I’ll remember more surely is how terrible, and beautiful, love is. The nails will be nothing compared to such divinity. You betrayed me with a kiss, and only the kiss was surprising.

You’ll wish yourself dead, fill your casket with silver coins. Nothing I can say will stop the rot inside your chest blooming to everything you touch. Just know, that when your heartbeat stops, it will be me cutting the rope from around your neck, me embracing you, and me showing you exactly how forgiveness is given. You loved me first, you loved me the most.

And I, Judas, loved you last.

redcheekdays

We’ll walk ourselves
the Earth’s edge,
to the sharp crack
between what we know and
what we long for,
and I’ll say,
“Put your mouth here
at my pulse,
where the sparrow thrums angry
in my throat.”
Because despite it all,
despite everything
we’ve done, we’ve seen,
I’m still desperate,
I’m still terrible,
and you’re still
an ache that won’t surrender.

redcheekdays

You called me ‘baby’
like flicking on a light switch,
something quick and easy that you knew
you could do to brighten up the room.
But I am sick of sleeping with the lights on,
because you were afraid of the monster in
your closet, and I was afraid that it already
climbed into bed with us, or that I had
been the monster all along.

redcheekdays

I trust you
the way the shore
trusts the sea
to always leave
with part of her.

redcheekdays

Special powers were attributed to the orange in Renaissance England, Italy, and Sicily. It was believed witches could bring death to an enemy by pinning the victim’s name to an orange and leaving the orange in a chimney.

When he comes in, late again,
the whole house smells wonderful,
but he can’t quite recognize the scent.
The fire is almost out, a few ashes
flicker in the absent light,
and suddenly he recalls
his mother holding orange peels
over a flame, the singed skin
curling back like petals,
releasing that fragrance.
She did it daily, all one winter,
just for the pleasure.

He doesn’t see on the hearth
the remains of paper, traces
of his name printed in clear
black ink. He wonders how his wife
knew about sweetening their rooms
with oranges, wonders whether it means
the air is cleared,
she wants to make up.
He breathes the evening in,
imagining her in bed, waiting for him,
forgiveness on her lips
like the taste of oranges.

redcheekdays

I was your insomnia,
I was your grief.

redcheekdays

You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye

redcheekdays

Two women with
the same claim
came to the feet of
the wise king. Two women,
but only one baby.
The king knew
someone was lying.
What he said was
Let the child be
cut in half; that way
no one will go
empty-handed. He
drew his sword.
Then, of the two
women, one
renounced her share:
this was
the sign, the lesson.
Suppose
you saw your mother
torn between two daughters:
what could you do
to save her but be
willing to destroy
yourself—she would know
who was the rightful child,
the one who couldn’t bear
to divide the mother.

redcheekdays

Make love to me in Spanish.
Not with that other tongue.
I want you juntito a mi,
tender like the language
crooned to babies.
I want to be that
lullabied, mi bien
querido, that loved.

I want you inside
the mouth of my heart,
inside the harp of my wrists,
the sweet meat of the mango,
in the gold that dangles
from my ears and neck.

Say my name. Say it.
The way it’s supposed to be said.
I want to know that I knew you
even before I knew you.

redcheekdays

Here is my hand, my heart,
my throat, my wrist. Here are the illuminated
cities at the center of me, and here is the center
of me, which is a lake, which is a well that we
can drink from, but I can’t go through with it.
I just don’t want to die anymore.

(x)

redcheekdays

I am not the first person you loved.
You are not the first person I looked at
with a mouthful of forevers. We
have both known loss like the sharp edges
of a knife. We have both lived with lips
more scar tissue than skin. Our love came
unannounced in the middle of the night.
Our love came when we’d given up
on asking love to come. I think
that has to be part
of its miracle.

This is how we heal.
I will kiss you like forgiveness. You
will hold me like I’m hope. Our arms
will bandage and we will press promises
between us like flowers in a book.
I will write sonnets to the salt of sweat
on your skin. I will write novels to the scar
of your nose. I will write a dictionary
of all the words I have used trying
to describe the way it feels to have finally,
finally found you.

And I will not be afraid
of your scars.

I know sometimes
it’s still hard to let me see you
in all your cracked perfection,
but please know:
whether it’s the days you burn
more brilliant than the sun
or the nights you collapse into my lap
your body broken into a thousand questions,
you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I will love you when you are a still day.
I will love you when you are a hurricane.

redcheekdays

I would tell them he is the 12th time
I tried to quit smoking. I would tell them
he is the spark that burns the forest down.
I would tell them he is the forest. I would
tell them he is pulled teeth. I would tell them
he is a barking dog. I would tell them he is
never lonely, which is terrifying. I would tell
them he is late night talk of broken windows.
I would tell them silver is still silver, even
when it is blackened. I would tell them I
have done my research, and love is not a
state of being. It is a house that takes up the
whole world. I would tell them I am everywhere
except apart from him. I would tell them I
am a dog in the yard. I would tell them he
is the choke chain.

redcheekdays

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the
hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you
with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

redcheekdays

i. in our minds, you
and i
made gods out of ourselves,

but when i wanted to
run, i found
the match you used

( i didn’t know
you’d already made
a god in my image )

ii. the flames danced
a dance of
blood and ichor

iii. “come.
( when did we begin to
bleed gold )

stay,” you said
“watch the world
burn;

i set it all
alight for
you.”

redcheekdays

Something changes without definition
There is no line of seperation from there to here
Its hazy border exists only in the passage of time
Somewhere between blushes and kisses and tears
Long ago when all of my senses were governed
By the cause of my perplexity because you were polarities
And I the blind captain of my own fate
Traveled those distances your distances north & south
Because love makes us selfless heros and selfish
Villains in one quick breath
Filling us completely like happy bubbles
Ascending to an esctatic burst or leaving us
Lonesomely vacant like haunted houses
Collecting cobwebs and memories whose recollection
Serves only as a minute picture of the difference
Between the people we once were
And those which we become.

Patricia N Degenaro

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