And here again I go, I know:

Should I be thought by you. Made by you. Taken by you. Loved by you, that is, forked, knifed, and skewered so you can see me through the gaps in your fingers as you cover your face and call it a gift. That’s loved, you’d say, by you, by anyone, anyone would, it seems, and it sometimes seems just about anyone would say I should.

But what is all this should, these tidy ethical imperatives with their fabulistic undertones and hearty implications so heartily underexamined by all those thankful grateful people just happy to have something to heartily say, and what does the think make take gift make of you, of me,

oh this foolishness that we then call “us,” getting our purchase on it and flawing it with our vision like T said and there I’ve gone again and told you what I think and think of when I only meant to ask so you could say what you do.[1]

Too late now though, I’ve already begun again and you’ll have to just please excuse me again as I go on ahead forging and telling you obnoxiously overclever and honest me-type things like how I think should is part of a wish-story of being all explained and only ever-partly told, deceived by “love” into the excusable magnitudes of preliminary captivation where sight sees through roses more obfuscous than fingers and loves all the more for its parallax distortions of two into one so cute and quaint and cutely quaintly effaced that no one sees—

or maybe it’s flipped over inside up outside down the other way round, maybe it’s a matter of being excusably deceived—how we wax presumptuous—by preliminary captivations into the magnitudes of love where mysteries get validated like parking tickets punch stamped by a dull cherub on late shift with countless other meaningless lives still left yet to arbitrarily affirm as a little congrats for their happy surrender to chance

yes-you-paid-for-it-now-you-may-go, the night is young and I’ve seen it all and all you’ll have is a lifetime to try to describe it.

Thank you.

No no, after you, certainly, my pleasure, my darling, here let me get that, eyelashes batted and gazes leveled and presences, presences, so hearty.

Right, and then what,

standing outside together just across the threshold in the rain sun snow whatever weather and go where, do what then, holding the image before us in cupped hands, the perfection dream wish-story fluid against our wills and already trickling through fingers, wide-eyed glancing around the claustrophobic expanse of a world with nothing but “us” against it but yes that’s right at least we have each other and at least “we” can fill our hands back up, just as we should and why

why can’t I stop there and put a pretty period on it why can’t I be quiet for once and not proceed to say it’s all silliness, silliness, darling, pure stupid foolish rash made-taken silliness. Why? Because I know I’ll soon say I’m truly sick of the taste in my mouth and sound in my ears of your fantastic fantasy of my fantasy of me, us and our obsessive attachment legitimized by simple “love” dubbing and here it is,

love love love, you, me, and that well-meaningly so oftenly wrongheaded thing, the fixer, right? re-gifted and spent, said and done, done and gone and supposedly, presumably, presumptuously given without restraint or condition. Love’s not a matter of deserving, you’d say and said, but did I deserve that?

How old that gets and older, now, I feel, feeling like I’ve grown, actually grown (but not to say that I am), and missing the sayer sometimes but not that, not any longer, not really, and no longer kind of secretly sort of wanting someone anyone else to tell me the most honest lie ever told, clinging to that temporary fix like it’s forever.

Because I just know I’ll just wander off and wonder what’s left but to smile mild and wry at the same beat overcleverness I use to daily dodge and drift through my own banalities as much as theirs as much as yours looking down at empty hands that once cupped those flawed-fantastic visions and making shit up till something fills, or fills me and I’m free again from shoulds and back, back again to fluid coulds, the true source, honest,

just possibility and me impossible me, honest and honestly grateful as can be

to no longer have those same hearty imperative things to so imperatively heartily say, content to sit back and ask

if you do. 

 

---

[1] T Fleischmann, Syzygy, Beauty, 59: “Before I described the house it already existed, I just had to say ‘house’ to get my purchase on it, to flaw it with my vision. Once I named you ‘lilac’ you became something I could pick, a panicle with many small blooms.”