an adventure like i’ll never know in my life
the passion in passing
the longing to belong
the appetite that millions won’t ever taste
or come to understand
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
i am thinking of all the things that have
passed between us
i am remembering things which i supposed
i had completely forgotten
i am conscious of an overwhelming
sadness for something beyond what
we thought we had under control
it seems a sadness for something else,
something that included you and was
part of the great awful sadness of all
the things i’d ever lost or loved or known
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
it seemed then i was in a different place
a different time
and this different place and time was
very real, and it was a world where the air
had been close and thick with death and
with your spring perfume, a universe in your
scent
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
time ceased to exist on any meaningful
basis during these years, and i was often
absorbed in very simple things, as one
would when art, complexity, ambiguity,
the iconcity of a face and a flush of pleasure
are all precious and personal
but all during these years, i had a vague
but persistent desire to return home where
there’s an abundance of contrast
i would think of it acutely and i would
feel for my home the only glimmer of
desire i felt for anything outside my endless
pursuit of you
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
i knew the answer to my quest(ion) before i
ever reached texas
and when i came to texas i thought you
were powerful and beautiful and without
regret, and i wanted that desperately
i did not dare discover the extent of what
i was convinced belonged to me, nor try to
seperate that loss from some other oppressive
realization — that in texas i’d found no truths
to lessen loneliness or transform despair
rather, i’d found only inner workings of my
own small soul, the pain of yours, and
passion for a woman who was perhaps
more evil than i could really hope to become
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
i was helpless
you were helpless
i knew, had known even at the moment
when i turned away from you, that behind
my back, that behind your eyes, there was
for him the love you could not hide, the eyes
that wanted him instead of i
for a moment, i even conceived a savage
jealousy of the unionhood which you held
close to yourself in my presence as if i were
not there at all
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
i have now lived in two centuries, seen the
illusions of one utterly shattered by the other
i stood in the center, wishing one would
swallow me before my vile unsupportable
hunger to escape them both ate at itself
and when i thought your heart would kill
me and trust me i couldn’t care less if it did,
you parted us and rewarded him with a life
i wish was mine
