Only/Over

Here I am, going cross-eyed again, beats star-crossed or lazy-eyed so I can't complain, and how do you do? What it is that you do. What is it that you do? I'm caught in a loop with you, and. So I'll just be over here, writing the same things over again writing things only for you that only go over your head. But when he's not watching, he reads; between the lines. In the spaces? And in the punctuation? In the carriage returns and the damnable linefeeds? In that infinitesimal space between lips and in the breath between subatomic particles? I've had that place on my mind for about a thousand years, all imbued with foreign new color and familiar new smells, with flush love coming off of us like heat. But I'm glad for this other place, too, our gentle complacency. If you said you like me better than your past or fantasy girls, I wouldn't believe you, and if you gave me a diamond, I'd only use it to sharpen my teeth. But that is because I love reliability so much that I want to eat it up with a spoon. And you need sharp teeth to eat reliability.

nothing really rocks
nothing really rolls
and everyone
you know
some day
will die

But you will die with a tattoo of a flag with my M in it and it will end up being a bit of a buzzkill for your next wife.

• Unless her name also starts with an M.

• Then she will probably think its fate or karma.

• And you two will be so well-suited because you, too, are a fatalist.

• And you believe in karma.

• Because you have a bad case of Catholic guilt.

• That you got from that evangelical protestant upbranging.

• But she will never love you the way I do, my man-child son-husband.