ba-dum. ba-dum.

soo I left my family to come home for work's sake and alone time's sake and a warm bed's sake and my tortoise's sake, but I am sad. I go through phases of weathering loneliness and dreading loneliness, and I dread it tonight. I wish I weren't alone in this house, and it reminds me that on any day that I think living alone would be a good idea, I am simply moving through a phase of weathering the loneliness. my four happy roommates are away until tomorrow, and I think I'll sleep on the couch tonight. something about grouping unordinary circumstances always feels more ordinary. alone in my bed: strange. alone on a couch: normal. and as much as I love my tortoise, he isn't much of a cuddle bug.

it's a weighty feeling that I'll do my best never to give myself over completely to a relationship without anticipating that it will last for...well, for forever, because in that vein, I anticipate it will be quite some time before that happens. I've given pieces of myself away, but the good news is that I like myself enough to hold on to the rest. it will be something of a triumph for whoever wrestles it from me, actually. or is it whomever? no matter.

my heart is skipping beats. ba-dum. ba-dum. badumbadum. ba---dum. ba-dum. ba-dum. ba-dum. badumba. dum. sigh.

oh, and I wrote something new, if you'd care to read it. never date a poet of any variety. no matter how it ends, the end will remain an artistic wellspring for the rest of your life. which is an especially long time if you're a tortoise.

***

you taste like the mugginess of a summer midnight
the air of marked heirlooms—old upholstery perhaps
a taste that smelled like the beach at dawn
a smell I’d know anywhere
a smell that taps me on the shoulder from time to time
and challenges me not to know it.

nothing intrigues me more completely
than the idea that your taste has changed
that your smell has developed
so that, when I stumble upon the likes of either,
I am not remembering you at all
but all that’s left to remember.

a smell that taught me home
a taste that let me go
and a realization that my senses
are making sense
of more than I knew to require of them.

you tasted of permanence
and of transience
the way cigarette smoke disappears as it stains your clothes
but I don’t like everything I used to
or dislike all I’d never touch.

my tongue has grown as my brain has,
contained only by the vessel that holds it.
both have too much to say.
my taste has fine-tuned itself,
adapting to what I need.
your taste has grown as your needs have,
increasing the distance between its realities
and my view of them.

your taste has doubtlessly marbled itself
mixed what I know with what I don’t
all the while leaving what I remember
no choice but to marble as well.

a future collision of our brains
or tongues
would act somewhat like a software update
or the recognition of external hardware;
reacquainting would require acknowledgement of increased memory.
they are as two poles that will never touch
or a wave that follows another to the shore—
composed of the same material
but never at the same time.

the whites I labeled
Fresh Starts and
Good Parts and
Free Hearts
now present themselves differently
no matter how slightly;
for any good designer knows
that a coat of Eggshell
taints a coat of Porcelain.
the eggshells you coated me with have since cracked
and scattered,
leaving the porcelain I now don
to chip under someone else’s wear.

if walls could speak,
they say,
if walls could speak,
they would fill their rooms with a foreign future
dotted simply with remnants of their past.
crooked rocking chairs
mismatched china
framed scenes of glossy smiles
hung level on faces that will never again respond
to the stroke of your stranger brush.