You can never go back home -

if you eat on
a chipped table
at the office,

and shower under
a low faucet
at the gym,

and fuck in hotel
rooms with
bristly sheets,
how even could
you, really?

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"I felt Tamara shrinking inside me. 'You're full of anger,' she said. 'I'm full of yearning' I thought. 'Can't you see? I have a toxic case of yearning"

- 'A Horse Walks Into A Bar', David Grossman.

Left unsaid

"We never go places,
I want to see things!",
she said, wincing -
petulantly - like a child
biting into a raw mango.

I thought of the early
morning voyage we
took, south of your navel,
and of navigating my
way to your lips through
the commotion of
disheveled, undone hair.

I thought of the view -
you perched upright on a
white pillow, and the setting
sun casting aspersions all
the way down to your waist -
and of how the high tide
rumbled and then dissipated
anxiously, at the sight of you
carelessly unclasping your dress.

"Can we please go see things
now?", and we did, but I
never told you that your
smells and sighs, contours
and moans; the crevices
of your body, and the
corners of  your soul,
were more novel and more
charming, to me, than all
of the places in this world.

Possession -

they say -
is 9/10ths of the law.

I now possess, a trinket
of yours,
that he gave you
before our time.

Abandoned amidst
gas receipts and
tobacco leaves,
sunken to the bottom
of my sack -
like treasure mauled
by a pirate ship.

Possession is 9/10ths
of the law, they say,
but I don't buy it.

In this pot roast
of love,
Besieged by the transitive
properties
of ownership and
affection,
I now possess what
he bought and
you own.

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“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

-The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

Swept

When we say I
miss you what
we mean is I’m
filled with
dread. At night
alone going
to bed is
like lying down
in a wave. Total
absence of light.
Swept away to
gone.

By Hayden Carruth.