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.
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