toothbrush philosophizing

The center of the universe is a small square box of broken hearts that reaches infinitely to the coastal shelf, then drops to the bottom of a bottomless rock. Some say it is the extra room to hell, where deep sobs and empty stares populate. Ever expanding I know it. I have seen it�"my bedroom is cold. I need you to warm it with your body here next to mine…why are you not here with me? Why are you off somewhere else? With someone else?

 

Lust/love/loneliness: the L’s of Loss.

They never stay, he never stays.

 

You’re in my bed wrapped with me in a sheet�"then alone I sleep with a quilt.

Its folds take up the space where your body should be�"so close to mine our skin like suction cups kissing. You’ve gone left me in the stairwell with tears in my hair and spilled

emotions on the couch cushion. Restless roving hopeless hope pooling in the (almost) empty

beer bottles grouped under the coffee table�"Staunch still soldiers of crossed-out mind-blotted thoughts: Desire�"muted. Leave-taking�"taken.

Taken against my will. It’s my fault no it’s your fault but it’s my fault because it’s your fault

and the fault-lines of my fingers running across your shoulder-blades are buried

in the wreckage of your wake. You woke me up, I felt beautiful and brave and unstoppable

 

Like the train that doesn’t know its track is about to run out so I fall

 

 

 

off

 

 

the cliff

 

and my back is snapped, my hands frozen in stiff claws that curl around your face. Eyes wide open staring ordering a reality that does not exist because I am broken and can’t be fixed and the time machine I built at your request is lying in pieces�"

 

I took a hammer to it after you left and beat it senseless, which is

silly because machines don’t have sense to less. The hot angry tears pushing down

my face and into my mouth tasted like your sweat. I stuck my tongue into your mouth once and retrieved the guitar pick that you hid from me in the folds of your own slippery tongue you almost choked as I recall almost choked on my affection but

 

We shot-gunned those beers and all the pain went away and nothing hurt and I didn’t think about how much you hurt when you went in and went on your way out, carving your way into my stupid heart with a knife so gentle as it sliced my skin open�"it cut so deep into me that I cried out with the thrill of a black and white film reel drenched.

Saturated.

 in Technicolor wonderment. Stupendous bafflement that this feeling could exist. For me. But not for me.

 

Now.

 

(REW �-�) the tape in my head and (׀׀) at the points that make me close my eyes and imagine that this gray empty field is all a dream and I’m sleep-walking again in the mist I can’t see but move around by feeling the rocks and brush and imagine that soon very soon soon now you will wake up and coax me back to your side where your lips will soothe my restless spirit crawl and drag across my back and make me shiver with peace.

 

But the tape is stuck the VHS is chewing eating consuming devouring all that has been.

I can’t bear to remove it, can’t stand snow blizzarded death of hope. Leave the tape in, turn the light off, and tomorrow perhaps the dream-smoke will clear and it will (►) again. Delusion is a pleasant illusion. I know my shaking finger will linger over (�-�) but will only press it after Whitman’s “I stop somewhere waiting for you” stops (�-� ►) in my head night after night.