Collective words

In the hope that this delights you as much as it did me, I hereby inform you that the collective word for cats is an intrigue, a parade for elephants, a tower for giraffes, a thunder for hippopotamus and a conspiracy for lemurs. Also, a romp for otters, a crash for rhinoceroses and a murder for crows. 

Now excuse me while I locate an exaltation of larks.

Predicament

He came with stuff. An antique chest, accouterment suited for a chef, raven paintings and haiku books. 

It was the narwhal whale sculpture that finally made her ask. 
Who are you? And how are you single?
I was waiting for you. 
She nods. It will take her some time to articulate her predicament: she believes the very things she knows aren't true. 

Our own Higgs Boson

As a lover of structure and order and answers, I wish I could pinpoint the second it all began. 

Perhaps it was when I first came across your photographs and captions. Their thoughtful selection betrayed an urgent wistfulness I was convinced was visible only to me.

Or maybe it was before we even met. You were tugging on me years ago, back when I first realized it was time to leave him and start over.

Maybe it was reading the list of things you couldn't live without and knowing I could easily ensure your survival by providing an endless array of good Japanese knives and a life replete with serendipity.

I guess it could have been later too. After I told you on the sidewalk that I would never get on a motorcycle with a stranger. Or later, after the homeless man in the gas station assured me that you were a keeper. Or later, after you grimaced the first time I experimentally called you my boyfriend.

Or yesterday, when I realized (again) that I need space and need you, both at the same time.

Of course, it's entirely possible that the answer doesn't exist. That there is a missing piece out there somewhere with the potential to elucidate not only how and when our universe - yours and mine - began but by extension how it works and how the most elemental pieces of us fit together.

It would interpret why the currently abstract matter that constitutes our relationship actually has mass. And how it, combined with gravity, gives weight to what we are inadvertently building.

Maybe some day in this lifetime we will find it, and it will explain everything.

The antidote

To an empty refrigerator
A spacious bed 

A clean floor
To having all the time in the world
To every matter I ever closed
Or gave up on
To every absolute
(Almost)
And prediction
Assumption
Preference
To habit
Ennui
Déjà vu
To independence
And carrying my own suitcase
To brittle promises
Existential questions
To nightmares
To suspicion
To forgetting
To remembering
To leaving early
To reason
Moderation
To stale dreams I forgot what box I put in
To sensible shoes 

Gloveless hands 

Pulled-back hair
To the right time and the right place
To every day feeling like Wednesday

You are the antidote

Don't look back

I never look back
After we've kissed goodbye.

You think it's because
I'm quick to move on to other things 

My gait along the sidewalk strong, determined.

If you only knew.

I treasure believing you want to look at me for as long as possible.

I am certain I feel your eyes on the back of my neck
As I walk away.

I don't turn around because I couldn't bear to be disappointed.

To twist and find instead your back to me 

Your strong, determined gait far along the sidewalk

And realize that so quickly 

You've moved on to other things.

Changing

I grounded terrestrial logical overachiever dependable a loner a planner sole master of my fate haven’t seen her in so long this girl her bare feet secret diaries her free-fall eternal possibly calamitous her reverse swandive/skydive (not to fall but to fly) outlookless

Her vigor carnal adolescent irrational social inventive un-analytical she is unafraid chaotic kinetic keeps me up with her incessant dreaming wants to move to a fragrant country has taken up praying

I hope she stays a while

(Photo: realsimple.com)

Longing

For the feeling after yoga to last all day grounded and peaceful for one night of deep uninterrupted sleep for a dark corner in a hotel bar (or any sacred place) where your hand might touch my arm again for a pause button (I could have said rewind) a stop button for the way things used to be back when my parents had superpowers framed my paintings tucked me in tight for how fresh everything looks for travel for music my headphones for a place to hide or not need to for good food we never shared but most of all for Sundays with you

Imaginary friend

I have always had imaginary friends. The first one’s name was Clementina. She had chin length orange hair, smooth and straight, and when she came to visit the first thing she would do was stretch out alongside me on our bedroom floor and help me design blueprints for future department buildings.  

I picked my most recent imaginary friend out of a catalog, and now he lives within me. Instead of coming and going at will like that childhood friend who only visited every other week, he is ever-present and exists in what feels like a thick rope wrapped around my spinal cord. 

He runs the flat palm of his hand over my upper arm even though I have never told anyone that is the only part of me that feels empty. He whispers answers into my ear before any of the thousands of questions I want to ask have been formulated, or when in my apartment I am kept awake by the sound of floorboards creaking under the weight of dreams I haven’t had yet.

The structure of his thoughts is very different from mine (his ancestral, labyrinth-like, horizontal, elaborate; mine recent, smooth, simple, vertical) and yet his heart and mine pulse so similarly it’s hard to tell them apart.

In the early morning, when I can’t sleep, he repeats in that rhythmical way of his, always out loud, everything I try to hide, like a mantra, like an affirmation, like a lone witness to this new person I am becoming.

And this is how I know for certain I need nothing beyond the strength his presence brings me - clear, saline and invisible. 

I don't remember

You'll be with someone else someday

She'll ask you about me you'll search inside your head and look back at her with those liquid eyes and say I honestly don't remember

I don't remember her why I loved her what we did on Saturday mornings why we fought why we left each other you'll look at our life together thousands of photographs and wonder why you saved them you'll keep the ones I took of you against so many ruins all that sand and delete the ones with our arms around each other

Make a note of this put it somewhere where you won't lose it

I will always remember

Photo - Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Lies

I will always take care of you I will never this is forever this is constant under control I am alone nobody would understand this is unequivocal absolute unsolvable unforgivable that is impossible this is a principle a cornerstone The Truth my Truth there are two sides to every story (two sides couldn’t quite cover any story)

I prefer now I prefer you a room with a view (not just any view) a walk in the rain (which was a cliché until you were holding the umbrella) help taking my boots off at the end of that long walk

http://www.thisnext.com

Easy to misinterpret

What happened you want to know to the periods and the commas and the exclamation points and the question marks to which I say look around it’s all inconclusive easy to misinterpret so why not let a jumble of words be simple be humble represent nothing but themselves

Hungry

I am hungry for words for learning more about myself for books a glass of cold water not for tricky territory or moving pieces across a flimsy chessboard not for inattention or cunning for order a floor polished clean for clarity and light for a tide pool for beauty and a new lined notebook

Photo - Galiano Island

Parallel world

Routine is the antidote a schedule a sequence procedure a habit morning toast the drive to work that parallel world scratched air weatherless empty it can’t touch me over here for long stretches of time I forget that it’s there perhaps it was only a bad dream

Photo by Luca, Nayarit, Mexico

Fanatically musical

I like order empty space rows of things patterns rhythmical there is poetry in symmetry dissonance in chaos it's not that I'm obsessively neat it's that I'm fanatically musical

Photo: Tidepools in Galiano Island

When you're ready

My house it reminds me some day I will sit on the Adondirack chair in the backyard learn how to use a tagine read all the books on my bookshelf in alphabetical order lie in the wide red sofa or on the cool wood floor and watch the moon through the skylight wear my sequined t-shirt and all those shoes use the hot tub burn candles apply beauty treatments I’ll learn to knit take in every single photograph in the coffee table books sip Turkish coffee from the small white cups some day I’ll have time for this my house assures me you go do what you need to do and we’ll be here when you’re ready

Photo: www.realsimple.com

Possibilities

I love this poem by Wislawa Szymborska. It invites me to make my own list of preferences.

Possibilities

I prefer movies.

I prefer cats.

I prefer the oaks along the river.

I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.

I prefer myself liking people

to myself loving mankind.

I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.

I prefer the color green.

I prefer not to maintain

that reason is to blame for everything.

I prefer exceptions.

I prefer to leave early.

I prefer talking to doctors about something else.

I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.

I prefer the absurdity of writing poems

to the absurdity of not writing poems.

I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries

that can be celebrated every day.

I prefer moralists

who promise me nothing.

I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.

I prefer the earth in civvies.

I prefer conquered to conquering countries.

I prefer having some reservations.

I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.

I prefer Grimm’s' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages.

I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.

I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.

I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.

I prefer desk drawers.

I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here

to many things I've also left unsaid.

I prefer zeroes on the loose

to those lined up behind a cipher.

I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.

I prefer to knock on wood.

I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.

I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility

that existence has its own reason for being.

Wislawa Szymborska

(Nothing Twice, trans. by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh)

Photo: www.realsimple.com

Berth

I need space not a room or a house but a swath of the milky way not a backyard a national park not elbow room dream room not a puddle an ocean not a line in the sand the split of land from sky I need my eyes to see as far as they can I don’t know how someone so small can need something so big but I do

The key

I have an odds and ends drawer with rubber bands and matchboxes and birthday candles multicolored thumbtacks and an eraser white perfectly rectangular a black permanent marker and coins from other countries paper clips I found a key in there I plan to keep who knows when I’ll come across something I need to figure out how to open

Photo: www.digitaldesktopwallpaper.com

It doesn't matter

It doesn’t really matter all the things I remember how my father would carry me on his shoulders my mother’s box of rings the Eiffel tower the manta rays swimming in the light of the dock everything becomes a footnote something someone puts in parenthesis or leaves in the back of a closet (remember how I said I liked your tie?)

Photo: http://www.honusports.com

Another possibility

Forgiveness might be too ambitious pure intentional you could instead trip over accidental restitution walk into a course balance of all these mutual infractions contrived spectral maybe indistinct wrongs committed over the years can somehow cancel each other out

Photo: www.realsimple.com