my nerves are singing under my skin

sometimes when you wait long enough
all questions are revealed. the answers
may take a little while.

drifting away from what we dreamed
together and apart i think of the things
i don't need to do, the things i need to do
a cornucopia of rue. the days the stars
exploded over my world, the days of petting
a cat and the transient shredding of each moment
how sad to not live in the now. i can't
keep holding on to what might have been.
yet i do. instead, i keep
holding on the what's happening now
i weave stories of super8 certainties
as if i'd grabbed you from a movie in the middle of a scene
rearranged your tie and your kitchen
and placed you back into the same situation
with some differences in a key position.
i am the other woman. the one you should have met
before your family. now you have an insta replacement
from a different casting call, a different part which calls for
a good friend, a good mother. i wonder
how badly i must have treated someone
in a former life to latch onto this mistimed trajectory
with you. the tarot says we refuse to let it end.
do we? should we? would we destroy each other
and build new temples or would we rise like flame
and burn ourselves out? i bet that scares you, you have
young children. aren't there other possibilities?
can we think outside our cubes for a couple minutes?
but you have to ask yourself
with all the opportunities i have i out there
oh yah o man we is all so special
why do i keep coming back to you and why do you,
when you have just as many chances for new flash false starts as i?
is it a sickness? obsessive
addictive personalities?


yet you seem as if you're used
to confidence while i , well, i've always been confindent--
confident i'm an oddball. i think you just have a better mask.
but it broke. your sense of self is morphing, you don't know who
you are. watch a baby making its way into monkey child.
he picks lice from his mommy, picks up the spoon and mashes
green peas into his face, sticks things up his nose, in his mouth,
he doesn't know who he is, what he does. what are these things for?
in the same sense this is what a butterfly does when coming from
cocoon, this is what love does when it reaches past lust.


when we met you'd only just moved into your single's apartment.
it had two bedrooms but instead of making one of them for your boys
who would only be with you 2 weekends a month, you turned it
into your office. the boys could sleep with you or on the couch.
you needed something to fill your emptiness. i would do, i did do,
it was so quick it was too soon. you were in denial and shock.
i was trying to get over another bad relationship. the ambien radio
put us to sleep more than once. you proudly showed me
all the things you collected and brought with you
you angrily showed me all the things she collected and left behind.
you did not. you brought all the shackles of your house
all the misrepresented shekels that came between you and your dream
and squeezed them into your rooms.
all but the thing you say you wanted most. your boys.

i had my own place. my own children. almost grown, i was testing
the empty nest syndrome sans partner. looking for an imprint
over old lovers, young lovers , ex lovers.
my trip to reno was a distant past but i remember how i left him
like she should have left you it seemed unfair to
me that she would move the children
so far from their dad, so i sympathised with you
as i could not with my own ex, to whom i left it all.
except we cut the kids in half.


old enough now to pull themselves together, i wondered
what is it i want? puck gave me some brew, and i met you.
if it seems like magic, that's prolly what it was.

2b continued