intrusive thoughts pt 2

I wasn’t brave enough to go to the bar today

don’t ask me why  I’m not sure

maybe it was the tumult and noise of the crowd

the kind that would ignore my pleas for help

just for one more shot of whiskey

 

Or maybe it was

the mix of tobacco smoke and hops laden smell of Nordic beer

that acrid combination that spilled from your lips as you screamed in my face

 

Or maybe it was the dank and the hot,

the cramped humid spaces

like the clamminess of your hands against my face

or the feel of your forehead against mine

 

Or maybe or maybe or maybe

it was a million other things

That you dragged out of the dark

that night you buried your hands in my tummy

and pulled forth more than just my hips towards your own

 

 

and even though all I want

is to walk those cobblestones down the harbor

feel the ligaments in my legs stretch under that cool sea breeze

my lungs expand with the full salt air

my heart race when I see that kind fisherman

to lose myself in the fuzzy grey of his sweater

or the seafoam green of his eyes

or the soft brown of his fine-fingered hands

I still keep the ice table between us

count the fine lines on his lips instead of looking at his face

no matter how obvious he makes it

that all he wants is to press his forehead to mine

 

because what if what if what if

one night it turns out

that he wants to add his own storyline

to the palimpsest of flashbacks

what if he spills an ocean from his seafoam eyes

as he shakes the life from me

or plunges his hands so far into my waist that my insides recoil

what if he, too,  is just like you?

 

I’d rather be alone and never know

what the velvetine notes of his voice sound like after-hours

or what his last name is or

whether his bed is as soft as his heart

than risk meeting another you again

alone in a hot humid bar

 

and this was supposed to be a poem but I guess now it’s a letter

to you

even if you don’t deserve it

or

the space you occupy

in my heart or in my head

 

But I thought I could bury you like I buried the first hurt

bury the feeling of being flipped over by coarse hands in locked rooms,

bury the feeling of being tokenized and erased in drafty labs,

bury the feeling of black sulfurous sediments sliding into my ear

by

wrapping it up in the good and the milk and the honey

in the soft dirt underneath pine plantations or

the smell of honeysuckle and sunshine on the mount

in the taste of freshly-cut pineapple and iced coffee and catered sandwiches

 

But I can’t I can’t I can’t

no matter how many times I try to lose the memory of you

every time I walk down the harbor

faster and farther away from men who look like carbon copies of you

because let’s be honest like you were

that night at the bar

when you confessed yourself to me

 

you were part of the burial before

you were a piece of the loamy topsoil

your smile every time we met and

your embrace every time we parted ways

the quiet way we would talk among the stately trees about anything at all

 

And I wish so much that that night hadn’t happened

that you hadn’t appeared in the doorway lurking like a ghost

that you never ordered that beer like hops in a glass

that you had never taken those hands

that once held me in hugs as soft as that fisherman’s heart

and buried them so far into my body

that you dragged out every black moment I ever had

from the interstitial space between my ribs

and into the space between us

that night at the bar

when you confessed yourself to me.