didn't know until now that bluebeard was a fable / didn’t know the knowing them would come with knowing you

love is so so so weird --it doesn't face forward does it?

when I get a message from you and it feels specifically from a person I wouldn't have known without your prior acquaintance / connection! 

((beating around the bush))

this jump jump in my heart and it makes me want to jump to--but i settle down and try to contain it by tapping my fingers or writing a little note on my phones clipboard.

how do you deal with this feeling?

it's confusing--is love even the feeling behind this heart and body energy?

does love mean I have to also want to spend my life with a person or be romantic (last week a lady in a chair asked me why i said "eww" when she asked me if I see myself ever being in love or being romantic--it hurt so much but I held back the sticking out my tongue instinct)

but also love --right now is a blur, one that I like--the lady doesn't let me forget that it's safe..that i don't stick my tongue out while reading a message--it's like looking into someone's eyes--sticking my tongue out would compromise the moment--like one time i was about to say "dad you're so odd but i still love you" and he farted..then it ended the weird heart feeling..i was like oh dad you ruined the moment--but maybe my high and dry and binary expectations of love did more. 

when I first started talking to this person apart of your people..I got the jump --waiting was a jump--now all it takes is a song --the sky--a trip down the sidewalk for the jump to come back--is it possible i'm in love because while talking to this friend of yours i have learned to be more in love--"i'll love the littler things" 

i think i love them very much. I think that's the hardest thing to admit but the easiest way to say it. I'm not sure what to do with this feeling either--my "love" feelings have always had to be secret--and maybe that's why when bringing it up with the lady not so stranger, I stuck my tongue out--played along. but i do love this person. i'm afraid to go further or say that--because it could also invite an ending. the antagonist to my new interest in love--will i stop believing in it if they don't have the same jump in their heart when they think of me? 

love is rude!! it's a puzzle this way.

I'd never want to love someone who doesn't get the same type of jump and rush and sun when they think of me. as I do when I think of them.

this is why it's gross and confusing. and why I can't tell left from right today and why I never learned to tell time on a clock. dependency. my heart has been broken in small pieces but never all at once--loving a person fully and letting my heart jump--also means promising my heart a long and terrible fall. 

that is what i'm scared of. that is why love is gross. that is why i'm forever projecting.

I didn't mean to fall in love with one of your lights in the dark--a human you know makes the world feel open--that saying "it's such a small world..huh?" I don't ((for weird reasons)) want to be in love...yet. 

but, I love this person, but they are firstly yours! and I can't hold onto the secret anymore, so i'm gonna go to chelsea piers on the last day of this semester December 20th and scream it into a voice recorder and at the same time send it into the ocean. 

forgiveness is a tough spot to be in. what kind of ceremony does letting go of love look like to you? we should join forces and protect each other from the grey area or explore it.

maybe this is why a character I'm trying to write into a play, Noah, has been showing up more.

 ((Paikea in stills from Whale Rider (d. Niki Caro, 2003))






They too know how to be prepared but love is a dance and improvisation--they do not know how to just dance, how to say yes and, how to continue..halting is easy. 

and today I still love them. my stomach is screaming at my diaphragm to say it out loud--but I cannot yet, I just needed to tell you--fuck my protections and secrecy --you have great people near you. 

I mostly want this person to find all the love they need into this end of 2016 and the start of the next year.

And I haven't thought about sticking out my tongue in a little boy way this whole time.

what does your voice sound like ? what does my voice sound like when i'm around you?

"I don't get it," I try to say it in my voice, in the mirror i'm borrowing for the year.

They pull out the honesty though and I type into my phone quickly looking up as to not walk in dog shit or bump into a fast walking stranger "How do you keep from that feeling? How do I stave off wanting to be in my own kind of love?" 

A voice in the dark, that's what I used to think of phone calls, to my aunts and uncles, whose faces I couldn't see, but would still disclose the highlights of my week to, always promising that I was studying hard, that my good marks were  not just stories. When I call someone, when I read a text, when I read an email, I have to see that person, they need to be moving or else I kind of get stuck. It's easy to zone out in the dreams of your dreams of the human being that is dreaming out loud close to you--close to your ears. 

Today when my heart was beating, I saw a fleshy part before my ribs curve twitching and when I stopped to check it stopped to take a break. I don't even know what I'm saying anymore my eyes are turning into hearts and I don't like it because soon it will be something I needed to forget--something I flubbed. 

I think it's okay to end things and blame it on finding a white flag or treaty or gap or bulge. I thinks it's okay to admit that this crush will take over--but I cannot let it, platonic feelings need to be described as going further and deeper --we don't love our dogs in a romantic way because that's harmful and nasty--maybe when you're getting to know someone it's important to love them in this less than easy way. 

--like how dogs move their heads when humans hug them because they don't like it--

--like how i'm trying very hard not to get bit--

it's probably a good thing you can't taste a poem in your mouth in their mouth in her mouth in his mouth. it's nearby your mouth--and you can't kiss it and you can't hug it but you can hear it making noise and panting and watch the parts in people's shirts puff in and out and it makes the world okay--that the conditions were right, that you heard that poem with your own ears outside of your head, outside of someone's mouth, outside of the room and outside of night. poetry used to embarrass me because I liked it and guessed that to write in the way one had to be feeling all of IT all of the TIME. i'm being vague because it's midterms and i'm tired and i'm scattered and trying to read four things at once and write an article about safe spaces and all "I wanna do is be tied to you," 

that's it folks. 

"the titles of books you carry embarrass me"

long months, no time; long time, no see. 

if someone said, "long time no see," I don't think I would know the right way to respond--I might just half-smile and say I need to use the bathroom, they might just decide that they haven't seen me (no see) in a while (long time) on purpose, that maybe I might just always have to get away and they might just have to find someone else who is tired of getting away.

--I remember learning the word cowering in 8th grade and being proud of a weird ballad I propped up against the word--the teachers eyebrows almost flew off of her face and she asked if I knew "what the word cowering" meant, and her eyes asked, "if I was okay," and my eyes asked, "why it isn't okay to cower?" and I shut my eyes and changed the verb and never got the answer from her. 


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last year I loved somebody I understood but didn't know--one day it was raining and I was sad and at 2pm we moved our conversation from the internet to text messages and they sent me a picture in a reflection and I realized that's the closest i'd get

to seeing them--and them to seeing me. Picture swaps remain this invisible conversation, the one that's too weird--too different--too frightful a job for words. 

this year although it's almost over--and is strolling through time by means of a scary election and a scary choice and nothing like ""ideas for new years resolutions"" will wake anybody up or make anything better, 2017 will be a summit and it's up to my unreliable association with words ((never by dictionary standard)) --maybe even my unreliable narrative to pull anything from the descent--to find exponential change. 

in algebra 2 class during high school my teacher said "exponential" with such an excitement that I began to see the word as good--in a world that maybe had scarce goodness. 

But it woke me up to receive a C on my test and to see that my

wrong answers came from a denial to understand when exponential growth could be negative. 

Yesterdays Girl,  1966

And loving somebody through the medium of apps and then texts and then emails and then brain space is fully exponential--but who knows if that means negative because I still don't think..even after the test..that I could put the word into a world a declining space, into smaller and smallest numbers-- even for a second. 

so this year--the year that is starting and ending--is glued together by the same silly fact: I love--or have an interest / "i'm so into you" with somebody I understand, but knowing this somebody rubs up against the complicated question: why choose a love that's safe? why do I make this choice, again and again, and the heartbreak swirls into breaks from people and an interest is a safe place to be because it breeds possibility, some questions and answers, and never dies in the face of a fact.  

I didn't come to this question alone, but I threw my ideas into the counseling room's ether and my therapist connected it to safety. A secret love is safe--until the secret gains weight...right? 

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you hold them up to the light even though your phone is shining. 

they are looking at the lens but you tell yourself they are looking into your lenses too. 

you hold them up and wondering if they are holding you up, or holding you down..is this back and forth malpractice, playing with swipes and send buttons and reading over small essay-like descriptions for any new meaning. 

searching a name once you allow them yours, and they exchange theirs. 

you hold them up and your phone falls on your face and your front tooth hurts and you curse at the screen and you are cursing at their picture, and you give up on it, and decide that it's a bad idea to ice a tooth directly. 

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everything keeps telling me, my next move could / should / 'ought to be Germany.