Why can’t love be love

I remember
in high school, always loving
one like
they’d be the last—wanting

to have that first, passionate kiss, the one
that tells you they’re the one

to marry, buy a house, have kids, settle
down with. Minivans, white picket fences

you know the kind—and always dreaming
after every heartache
for someone else, someone more—I thought
that was the problem.

Now, years later, with so many
people around at once, all I want
is coffee

with this brunette, who
reads a book ‘every now and then’

and who’d rather spend
this weekend
watching something on HBO

than getting married.

I can’t understand the forms

of myself.
I’m in bed, dreaming

of being beside
a beautiful woman, the sunlight
making her brown hair
blonde.

She’s asleep and smiling
or, later, writhing and smiling
and laughing.

It could as easily
be a man, but do men ever
writhe?

My curiosity always gets the best
of me—I think of names, ages, places
they were born, places
we live.

Hair, eye, skin colour—what’s cute?
what’s a turn on?
It’s almost heartbreaking
having so much possibility inside

and sitting here, giving it all
to my formless imagination.

Writer’s note:

I think my writing is changing,
becoming more personal.

Feel free to comment or
critique—I might be thinking
of compiling a book or two, too.

Slice of pie

please, thanks.

It’s nice
just to sit here with you.

So many people today
wonder where
to get their slice of happiness, how
to make their slice bigger.

So funny.

They don’t know
they’re going about it wrong—it’s

in this, this
warm blueberry, apple
or anything else—you know,

it doesn’t have to be pie.

That’s what’s
comforting—it’s here

at this table. And, looking out, it’s
infinite.

If I was your ladybug

I would love you
like a garden. Nibble,
lick, crawl.

You would be
so green and lush.

Or a caterpillar. I’d eat you, be
bound, hidden, then
one day

burst open
to continue this the cycle
of consume, create—

my yellow flutter;
your blushing plumes.

Writing a book

yeah, I am. But
don’t congratulate me yet.

Still stuck in that limbo
of excitement before
anything’s actually done

or not, you know.

Who am I
to argue what a book
wants?

Wake Up Call

.     She plucked the ear of the book like a guitar string, incessantly, the thin card of the jacket flicking back against the pages, bending slightly more with each minute.
.     ‘Do you have to do that while you’re here?’
.     ‘It’s the only time I get,’ she said, not looking up at him. She turned the page and continued plucking.
.     He walked over to the bed from the bathroom, stretching along the way, letting out a loud breath. Half sigh, half yawn.
.     ‘Tired?’ she asked.
.     He fell onto the edge of the bed and let his body crumple below him. He turned himself onto his back, legs dangling over the edge, looking up at her and trying to reach for her feet. She looked up as he made contact and giggled.
.     ‘Hey, stop it!’
.     He grinned. She marked the page, put the book down, and patted the a flat space between the crinkled sheets next to her. He pulled the down, turned over again, and moved up next to her. Slowly, like a wild jungle cat stalking prey.
.     She rolled her eyes and smiled.
.     ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You know I only have another hour.’
.     He didn’t look at the clock. He never broke eye contact. He paused for a moment, ready to strike, then lunged quickly up to her, cupped her cheeks, and brought his lips to hers. She kissed him back, smiling intermittently through it, looking from the centre of one of his eyes to the other. The green inner flares of his irises, the syrupy brown on the outside, the hazy grey between.
.     ‘So, how do you feel?’ he asked.
.     She continued to stare, tried to balance the views by shifting her gaze to the bridge of his nose before falling back onto the pillows.
.     ‘Better,’ she said.
.     His hands brushed along her shoulders, down her arms, her torso, around the outside curves of her breasts, beneath and back up between them.
.     ‘Mm.’
.     ‘You like that?’
.     She brought her own hands up along his arms, curved into the space between his shoulder and thick neck, up through his hair. She rubbed and tousled as he moved himself lower along her.
.     ‘Don’t stop.’
.     He moved one of her legs up in the air, over his head. He gripped her thighs, a strong arm under each of them, then looked into her eyes and grinned. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back, her messy hair splayed around her.

.     When they were done, again, the third time since they both entered the room, she drew herself up off of him and onto the length of his sweaty body. A thin curl of dark hair stuck to his forehead and she couldn’t resist trying to sweep it away. He looked at her as she did.
.     ‘I wish I could stay,’ she said.
.     He took a deep breath. It felt warm against her cheek and shoulder. The nearly always imperceptible hairs on her arm sparked to life as he slid the covers off of them.
.     ‘You can’t,’ he said and, looking at her, a hand grazing the stubble on his chin, paused. ‘You know you can’t.’
.     She wrapped her arms around him, over his shoulder, around his neck, under his other shoulder. Across his chest, elbow straightened, hand along his pelvis. Like some haphazard seatbelt. He looked at the clock.
.     ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Just a little nap. They’ll call us before we’re ever late.’
.     He sighed audibly, but didn’t object. She grinned.
.     ‘So, how is everything?’ he asked.
.     She curled her face into his neck, her entire body wrapped around his. She took a deep breath of him.
.     ‘Good,’ she said.
.     ‘You know what I mean.’
.     She rubbed her leg along his, his hair feeling rough but nonresistant. She waited until her calf, the inside of her knee rested perfectly on his.
.     ‘His sister and mom are both there,’ she said. ‘Both visiting. Taking turns. Under control, good.’
.     He leaned down as closely as he could, kissing the top of her forehead, catching a bunch of hair more than anything, but she still smiled at the gesture.
.     ‘And him?’
.     She lay silent, thumbing the skin of his elbow, squeezing the patch of thick skin. A long ago scar, it was whiter than the rest of him, little globs of various sizes like drips of something spilled from a straw. She knew it by memory, pictured it, all separate yet connected like a chain of islands.
.     ‘He’s worse.’
.     He rubbed his fingers along her arm.
.     ‘Is the treatment working?’
.     ‘Not much. He’s better than he should be, but not better as he should be. Does that make any sense?’
.     He thought about it for one second, two. It did.
.     ‘Yeah.’
.     ‘It’s just so hard with him like that,’ she said, nestling herself deeper into the warm air between his chin and shoulder, the skin of her cheek melting slowly into his like paste. ‘I mean he can hardly even do anything himself, and all he does lately is just yell. Even when I’m trying to tell him about his medication.’
.     ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, and with work and all. I understand.’
.     ‘Mm.’ She closed her eyes and kissed as much of him as she could. ‘Yeah, work. Sorry about the Monday meeting, too.’
.     He checked the clock again, looked at his pants strung along the back of the only chair in the room. The familiar sliding glass door of the shower. The little bottles of shampoo, conditioner, soap.
.     ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I was there. No one got mad.’
.     ‘I’m just glad it was you.’
.     She didn’t say anything after it. He thought for a moment.
.     ‘I mean, I know you,’ she said. ‘We know each other and there’s really no way I could even find the time.’
.     He shushed her. Just a little Shh in her ear, then a kiss on the lobe of it. She nuzzled against him as she felt his stubble on her forehead.
.     ‘So what I mean,’ she said,’ is thanks. And thanks not for work. Well, I mean for that, but.’
.     He shushed her again. ‘We should go.’ He uncovered both of their bodies, warmth rising off of them.
.     ‘We can shower,’ she said. ‘Together, just.’
.     He pulled away from her, her body trying to cling, limbs falling helplessly around him. She lay, didn’t snake an arm around his waist, didn’t get up to rub her breasts against his back or drape herself around him.
.     ‘You need to get back to him,’ he said, then looked back at her, his hair a mess too. ‘But, okay. Shower,’ and smiled.

.     As the steam dissipated, slowly retreating into little blotches against the glass, he stared at the bruise on her shoulder, the little purple and yellow patch on her upper arm. He moved forward and kissed her.
.     ‘Feel better?’ he asked.
.     She rubbed the healing bruises.
.     ‘It’s not his fault,’ she said. ‘I just. Sometimes I feel like everyone’s ignoring me, you know? Like he ignores me.’
.     He helped rub one of the immaculately clean white towels through her hair. She looked at the two of them in the mirror.
.     ‘And it’s not just in bed. It’s almost like.’
.     He stared at her, sweat or water dripping from the edges of her hair. He didn’t love her, but he did. He wasn’t sure what it was, from this close to her.
.     ‘Like you don’t know if he can care?’
.     She bit her lip and twisted her head back and forth  slightly.
.     ‘I don’t know, I feel like no one even listens anymore,’ she said. ‘I’m just really tired,’ she turned to him. ‘You know?’
.     They leaned in and kissed one final time before getting dressed.
.     ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘I’m here. I understand.’
.     And, as she shut the door to the hotel room, leaving first before him on the off chance she ran into anyone she knew, she felt more alive than she could ever remember.