notapoem

i.
i make a small stack,
delicately adding
each thing i don't know
the answer to.


ii.
everytime it rains
i send you the same text:
it's raining. godlovesme.
funny thing is...
i believe it.


iii.
A PERFECT DAY AS UNDERSTOOD BY Q:

11am
brunch with Mar at Greg's.
after, we walk down 19 terraces.
at the bottom there's a beach i don't remember seeing before.
there's no sand. only rocks.
in the water half a mountain stands alone,
waiting for someone's hand to lead it back to shore.
i sit on the rocks and put my socks back on.
Mar looks out at the waves breaking, which, sprays up into a haze
that never quite merges with the sky.
don't worry. i haven't quite merged yet either.
she nods. waiting. without ever taking her hand away either.

3pm
an old man walks into my office.
i'm tired he says. i give him a seat, which he reclines in.
closes his eyes. god it's quiet in here. i nod.
i am offer him some tea but he shakes his head with his
eyes still closed and puts a finger in front of his lips, shh.

3:30pm
i get a call, there's something in the mailroom for me.
it's a scarf. grey, with an orange stripe.
i'm confused, go home: hey Matt, did you send me a scarf? he hasn't.
John? not me.

two years later someone compliments my scarf. it's grey, with an orange stripe.
i smile. my best friend gave it to me, a rose petal from when we first met.
have you known her your whole life?
i shake my head. nono, of course not.

___longer.

4pm
i'm too tired to talk i confess, guiltily.
she understands. we meet anyway,
sit opposite each other in plush chairs.
i smell like coffee beans, for months i smelt like coffee beans.
it's less obvious in here, Pontius and Sepulveda.
every now and then you still send me a picture when you drive by.
the dusty valley, dusty stucco walls - beige from paint or dust i can't tell,
and your always fluorescent toe-nail polish. it's all i see sometimes, when i think of it:
a buzzard of a year, and your understanding face that for half an hour here,
ninety minutes there, silences the Furies.

6pm
you cry on the phone telling me about
how they want a drug test and you did this
naughty thing weeks ago just once and how
you wish you hadn't now oh my god how terrible
because it means you might not go (which to me
sounds like you might just stay) and you have to go
(you really should i say) because it's just what needs
to happen (in a few years i'll really know what you mean,
and you'll call me and remind me of it too) distance, sometimes
it's just distance just to be far and away and amongst strangers which
are so often just the friends you needed who don't know you and don't care
the name of your highschool boyfriend, and i nod through all this, unseen
because phones lack eyes - they crawl through the dark like salamanders
or something, i tell you it'll be fine, it's got to be, there comes a time
for distance and when the times come it just happens (in a few years
like it or not i'll know exactly what i meant) after i hang up the
phone i think to myself god i hope she can go/stay and
despite my best intentions never did separate the two.