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v u l v a l i c i o u s Ridiculous, but beautiful My brain is filling up with thoughts of a new crush instead of all the things it needs to be filling up with (smart things, school things, I read them in books and synthesized them into amazing nuggets of brilliance things). Puppy cuddling keeps me sane for the moment. Slobbery dog kisses on my cheek and the smell of slightly sweaty fur: it's disgusting, but beautiful. It makes me feel like I'm home. S/he sends me hir birth chart, and I try not to make comparisons. It all sounds right, I think, from Venus in Leo (people are drawn to you) to the bits of Virgo and Cancer that cover your chart: pragmatic, responsible, emotional: adjectives that suit you in the nebulous way that only astrological descriptors can. I sit down to work and can't think of anything. Jeff Buckley coming out of computer speakers only makes things worse, but I pretend that the sound of our mixed voices helps me work. I'm not fooling anyone, especially not myself. I write another set of gender poems. I write another letter. I write down something in a card that I couldn't say to anyone but a good friend. I miss the way I used to make art, and how it has to be planned now, crafted, sharpened bits of art time. In an email to hir, I say that I want to perform for the rest of my life, that I want to build a space for other people to perform. S/he wants to help (it's a good cause). I say we make good partners in crime, good partners in business. We make good friends, because this is how it always is. Holding hands feels good. I reach out like it's nothing now, and there's always a hand there, there's always something. I think it's easier to know that it's not going to be there, that nice hand with the gripped fingers, the swing of friend-lovers that makes you wonder if people think you're together. All weekend, I let myself believe that people were reading us as together. My hand on hir back. The conspiratorial whispering and giggles. We went everywhere together like it was a given. Together. S/he sits on my lap and asks to lick my eyeball. I can scream not hot over and over as I laugh into hir, but I'm thinking that this kind of ridiculousness floors me, is what I love, is what makes me like hir more and more. Not the serious, heavy handed fiery poet words so much as the silly, laughable, say and do the unthinkable things. It gets worse everytime, closer everytime. The walls feel smaller, look smaller. I can put one leg over, an arm on the top. I don't want to stop except to clear my head, but I really don't want a clear head. The truth is I like the hurt, I like the cuts and bruises and sweat in my hair. I like how hard it is to get in and get over, or to do one but not the other. I want to close my eyes and be in it, all the fresh squishiness of a heart that aches and arms that want to hold on too hard. The truth is I want to fall in love all the time, ridiculously, laughing from one end of the day to the other. |