Maple Syrup- Confessional

I'm at work,  I'm reading Rob's poem.

I'm supposed to be watching the doors at the grocery store to make sure nobody sneaks in past nine o’clock.

I stacked Vermont maple syrup on the shelves today and pictured you dancing your way down my body. I imagined that you’ve only danced with me that way, though I know it’s not true.

Now my hands are almost as sticky as the bullshit happening inside my cerebrum.

I remember how nervous i was this past february, 

so nervous that one morning I asked you if you’d like only a smoothie for breakfast,

after a night of substance induced familiarity.

Most nights you slept over, I woke up with puncturing thoughts, burweeds of a January rain, the hollowness of your back.

I’d like to think it’s a mix of attraction and whatever the fuck happens to my cognitive abilities after taking stimulants and staying up too late. 

I like walking

home with you 

I especially like your hand

up my shirt 

how you say “it’s good to see you” instead of “how’s it going”.

I saw your sister yesterday.

I know how much she means to you.

I can't imagine what kind of secrets float through the room when it’s just the two of you. 

The chimes were flailing on the fire escape a couple houses down from Granite

and the wind was catching the branches through the window where we all smoke cigarettes.

Lilly was jumping through the window, like it was some sort of skipping rope, while Marina bleached Ferdinand the bull onto a sweatshirt.

For a while there I felt inadequate to you.

Your love of books, your thirst for knowledge, my compulsive inability to sit still & need to be held.

I enjoy listening to you talk too fast.

I like your hands,

I want to kiss your thumbs.

I remember the day you went with me to get a new phone after mine got stolen in London.

I was so tripped out over losing my photos and my voice memos, as if imagery and music is all I've ever boiled down to. Sometimes it feels like that’s true, I know it’s not.

We walked through this cloud on the street, not knowing what we were bound to be smacked in the nose with.

It just so happened to be steam from the laundromat, it’s rare that you catch a scent like that in New York city.

I’m understanding the importance of taking things slow, life is very long and nothing is promised.

I feel like a kid, I've always been eager to have the answers and when I don't my body feels like what I imagine water looks like on a microscopic level when you fill an ice tray and leave it in the freezer for a few hours.

The first glimpse of spring has been words on a chalkboard.

The learning and unlearning of everything I have ever believed about myself and the people around me.

There’s a ball in my throat from my recollection of who I was when I set up a script and pushed you into a corner of what intimacy was supposed to look like between us.

I can talk for days about not digging my claws in, but talking is monotonous and you are far too special for claws or monotony. I care for you and that I know is true. I hope one day I can see you around in our corner of the world and not feel like I’m missing you. I never got close enough to miss you. Maybe it feels more real than it was because accepting reality can be more tiresome than longing for something. My days are feeling shorter and I’m starting to feel every drop of sweat synchronize on my neck. I’ve stopped indulging in things that make me feel sick and started to microdose the passage of time and the clarity that comes with it.

Maybe I was being foolish but at least I wasn’t dirtying my hands for something I didn’t plan on keeping around.