snakelimbs

I dream of us, and the dream hurts with an almost-pain, one that can barely be recalled. It’s like blindly running a fingertip over a forearm dappled with bruises, and hitting a sharp spot here and there. The dream is a red and smoky room. It’s the smell of wet suede and lipstick over toothpaste. Girls dance slowly as though their limbs are drifting in thick syrup, and we watch them but only see each other. There is a mirror behind our heads, and icy drinking glasses on the table in front with whole glacé cherries on the stems. Candied maraschino. We pluck them free with our puckered lips and the fruits burst full of liquor,

every day has a cool, quiet room at the center of it. the walls are light coming and going. the window is an opening in your memory, a chapel between moments. the edge of your life curves there and you become more of what you have always been. the distinction between falling and rising is lost in the space between particles and everything grows.

i. we landed in oklahoma and drank cheap martinis in the terminal; you carried my guitar and fell in love with my voice but not my tongue, not my hands. ii. there's a man with a garage that looks like a plane because nothing meant more to him. will you make a model of that bar? will you make a model of my red cheeks? or will you live in a townhome with her and three children? iii. the problem was you're not gay. the problem was there was feeling but it wasn't for us. i had you but it wasn't for us. iv. i'm not sure if i resent you, but i remember that bar and every pockmark on the stool you sat on while i played the song that parted yo