For A Few Minutes That Was Love

Before the honeysuckle I am breathless. Rosebuds in midair singing love songs to the sun. The hawk does not think the way you think - do you think in the way hawks think - do you think in a way that the difference matters?

Jasper observes that the pear tree leans at an angle similar to the Tower of Pisa. Half moon in the summer sky, a little after dusk, what else but love in the end defined you. There is no end, did you forget.

Sitting watching swallows over the garden, remembering how happy they made me when I was a little boy, when I did not know how fucked-up my life was, and what it would become while becoming something else. What is freedom if not this? After the rain, puddles form in the horse turnout.

Buttercups. That one spot near the apple trees where a bunch of violets blossom beneath a towering clover blossom, the pink and purple bringing me as close to gasping as I can get without someone mouthing my cock. Everywhere you look, the effects of a man's decision.

Three months now with neck pain that won't let me turn my head, maybe I should try sleeping in a bed again. He played his harp for me in his living room, he was lost in the notes, and I was lost in his lostness, and for a few minutes that was love. When doesn't the rain find your throat in a welcome way.

The night becomes slippery, full of ghosts who are no longer interested in haunting me, demons who would rather do stand up comedy for an audience that excludes me, maps on which somebody has scribbled happy faces with a yellow crayon making reading impossible. Remember going places? I question everything now except apparently the marriage, which lies in a domain over which another is the master.

Rewatching Breakfast Club, half of it anyway, then walking up Main Street to the bridge on the road to Plainfield, thinking about how I wanted to die for years before anybody finally asked was I okay. Hemlock needles in this little heart of mine.