#20
you and he
Copyright (c) 1997 by Annalee Newitz
his elaborate ambiguity
and his well-developed sense of absence
remind me
of why I cannot bear to see you
even after all these years
what was it in you that opened up so far
that I was seduced not just by your eyes and mouth
but by the jellied gleam of your guts
beating and pulsing
in their own wet interiority?
I could never decide if the dark of your look
was a trillion miles deep
or flat black
like construction paper
cut out to suggest something trite like "a profound distance"
even now you return, in him, like a Hollywood ghost
all tricks and mirrors and astronomically expensive morphing software
and here I am, drawn in again, to read your ambivalence and
to decide whether what's inside you is real
or just chills-by-the-dollar
if only it were just that I wanted to reach you
(because I could do that easily, over the phone or on e-mail)
but instead it's something worse
I keep trying to experience your half-hearted yet searing desire
in other bodies (which I might finally, truly possess without interruption)
more pathetically this time around
I find myself learning the same damn lessons
about how his intimacy, like yours, was stolen from him early
and so now it comes back like a pulsar
hot as x-rays then nothing
to extend the metaphor further
I cannot keep staring through this ridiculous telescope to locate his heat
(I'm not a fucking scientist)
I'd rather just meet him in person
without all the gore and radiation and conflict
but there's the other part--which I must admit to forgetting repeatedly--
where because of your distance you were somehow able to reach
all the way into the blood of my arteries
and regulate its pounding
so that I cannot stop feeling your disappearance in the cells of my body
with him I am reminded
10-29-97
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