Conspiratorial

When I die, I want to come back

as the shadows
in the hollows
of your collarbones

Or maybe as the sound of rain on a tin roof, something that I've never heard except in a grainy b&w home movie that plays loop-style in my, oh, god ... heart? Really, nigga? Heart? I've had it since I was 21 weeks old, including the nine months of cooking, and I'm just

one
among the hundreds
crying
for the millions

Did I say crying? I meant that to be performing. Did I say something funny? Everyone's laughing and East Timor, you're on your own (metaphorically, of course.) You'll hate me for two minutes but love me for ninety and that is something with which I can live, and you have to decide those things, I mean, if you're smart and don't like heartache you will,

decide
with what you can live
and with what you cannot

preferably before things get out of hand, on to paper, and into your, fucking shitty word choice redux, and maybe some deal-breakers you don't learn about a person until you've had two children with them, married them, and dusted off an old psychiatric eval but in most circumstances, its things like the unrinsed dishes or the bad accents or restless sleep, that undo the done and you know them, those things, those rubiconned wishbones, from the gunshot start.

you will say you don't regret it
but that is because
you are in love with regret

and I will smile
and kiss your bloody quicks
and tell you that I believe you

(are lying). In the meantime, I'll be over here on my knees, inhaling your exhalation, watching films about islands and wondering about the integrity of certain arguments of logic, namely what is real and what is not real, because I am plagued by things like this, and please save your neurological defenses for someone who knows less and cares more, because things like that hardly matter in a time like this, because the time is now, so said the propaganda, the work is seasonal and the dreams are pipe.

someday
when I am your wife
I will write you a song

Not instead of, but in addition to, stupid depressive digitized love letters.