i got down on the subway floor
face so close to whatever that fluid was
“is that fucking—oh my god, you’re crazy, dude!”
the way you laughed, the disbelief
made me feel proud
cause i was the type of guy who’d stick his face in piss to try and impress you
we sat in seats next to each other
should i hold your hand?
we got up for the little old lady with too many bags
hanging onto metal poles
trying to keep our balance
i swear you fell into me when the train was on the straightaway
did you do that on purpose?
i always wondered
our friends were there
i'd confided in them once
they watched me try to be someone i wasn’t in front of you
a thrilling game i never wanted to end
we could have a house in the country, made of branches and sparkles
we’d go outside in thunderstorms and really kiss this time
you wouldn’t have to stop and say,
“we can’t.”
big solid logs crackling in the fireplace
windows overlooking the frozen lake and eternally snow covered trees
white eclipsing green, cold smothering life
something spicy in the oven, talk radio in a different room
traced my fingers over your chest
your hand on my thigh
bliss, right here on this starchy couch
unburdened, somewhere in the mountains i should have run to
your hand absentmindedly reaches for—
at the station now
stepping into this underground world
do you want to stay down here too?
the little rattling reverie
closes with the doors of the train behind us
locked inside
Tag: love
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listen, we don’t do it anymore. and i miss it terribly. i’m also going to write about this one specific thing even though there are many family traditions that exist in our family.
we would always go to my aunt’s house, who was really my mom’s cousin, but like — you’re not going to call someone “mom’s cousin” so “aunt” it was — and we’d gather around the piano in a warm cozy house all decorated for christmas every year. there was a gorgeous twinkling tree with a beautiful train track set up around the base. i loved train sets as a kid and i always wished i could shrink myself down in size so i could ride them.
there’d be drinks and food and quality time with cousins and other family members you hadn’t seen in a while. one time a family member told me, “hey, i just want you to know it’s okay to be gay.” i was a 25 year old man at the time who had come out in 9th grade but i looked at him and said, “oh wow, thank you.”
the packet of christmas carols that was distributed was the same every year, but sometimes there would be new carols added! the songs we sang were always in the same order, pages worn with use and time, but lovingly so. staples sometimes barely keeping the pages together.
my aunt would sit at the piano bench as we all squished into the sofas, armchairs, or if you were young like me, the best spot on the floor. we’d go through the songs like a ritual, ushering in the holiday spirit as best our little voices would allow.
there was always one song where my mother would ad-lib a line in that was not in the caroling booklet. the song in question was called “nuttin for christmas” which as i type that seems absolutely insane — but my mother would always add in the line, “boy was she mad!” in an emphatically dramatic manner. it always caused my cousin and i to make direct eye contact and cringe.
every year my mother continued to do this. over. and over. my cousin and i looking forward to it more and more each year, until it became so deeply entwined in my own feelings about christmas spirit that i was no longer able to differentiate between the two.
we don’t have these caroling parties anymore and i miss the joy and magic the adults in our lives worked so hard to give us.
it’s almost like santa’s jovial “ho ho ho” to me now but if i close my eyes, travel back in time and remember how everything used to be, i can still hear my her voice singing out, “boy was she mad!” into a room so full of love and happiness.
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your life, your very existence
is more than the ego's attempts at self aggrandizement
i can never see myself
in ways you thought you could
there's an aching emptiness of where we used to be
lisped, drunken voice notes
"i love you"s
maybe he heard
agonizing over change and parents who leave
grief is funny because
our youth only ever dies at once or not at all
"i feel like i always make you mad"
you said that to me once
like you weren't my reason
for everything
maybe he heard that too
i hope your everything is safe and that you can take these little words out of my head and turn them into nothing, which is where we are now
floating out there, gasping for air?
god, i hope not. -
i buried my eyes a long time ago
so that i could watch the world above me
through a layer
where i could be safe
two blurred shadows, overlapping
and laughing
it's hard to see in the mire
followed you down the streets
on roofs of tall skyscrapers
the flashing lights of times square, dazzling
cozy cottages in the mountains, fire crackling
getting fuzzy now
but if i blink enough
i can still follow your trail
watched you get married
didn't even crytime passes
i survey less clearly now
i’m getting used to this
you see, things rot in the soil
but i heard sometimes they grow too -
i have a hard enough time thinking of 3 things that make me happy.
30?
here are some thoughts that came to me in no particular order.
- therapy
- my father
- my mother
- my sister
- my boyfriend
- my friends
- my job
- the internet (i know)
- youtube
- kingdom hearts
- a really juicy book. the kind that sits with you for weeks after you’ve set it down
- kool-aid in the summer (the blue kind)
- riding a bicycle
- singing in the car
- the enchiladas my boyfriend makes me (we can seriously get two dinners out of those suckers)
- music (especially the kind i like enough to buy on vinyl)
- falling in love
- traveling
- the moment i found my birth family in a rural little town across the sea
- dead by daylight (ok any sane person would never say this game makes them happy, but i love hanging out with my friends while we play)
- the mona lisa (i have no idea why seeing this in person was so joyful, it subverted every idea i had of it and i loved that)
- wandering around countries that are not your own
- that scene in stranger things where sadie sink rises into the air. you know the one. *chef’s kiss* superb moment in tv.
- when you showed me attention for the first time
- when you told me to never speak to you again
- my apartment (i seriously love the vibe we’re starting to build here)
- our cats, tucchi and wheezy (they are precious baby angels even if wheezy peed on my shoes)
- the moment when you realize the trauma is now just a part of you, and not your entire existence
- when we finally found the hotel in new jersey after walking from new york (why were none of the streetlights working that night)
- the fact that things like this give me a chance to reflect and be grateful about what i have in my life. that makes me happy.
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i can see you up there in the mountains climbing your way up to a life i've left behind it’s so weird to see your friends my friends once but i was just visiting wasn’t i? do you remember crying on the floor? not wanting it to be the end scratching my fingernails into the wood i'd hoped it'd hurt, but it had felt right you know it would have been a nightmare don't you? an awful twisting dark sleep paralysis on a never-ending loop dark forests in new england horse drawn wagon pulling us in warm breath swirling around us hot mead waiting inside and the snow was falling so softly a blanket i wanted to dive into but then i realized i didn’t love you for the first time and no amount of adventure or honeyed wine could change me i’m so relieved you’re happy and i watch on wondering what would have happened if i hadn’t been who i am
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i was just discussing this with a friend today, actually.
she’s about to head to new zealand and that’s the place i’d love to travel to the most. but alas, i am a poor human and travel to other places is something i cannot afford.
i fell in love with a boy there once — just through email, nothing crazy — but i always had this fantasy that i’d just go there and find him walking down the street one day.
i’d say, “sam?” and he’d say, “joe?” and even though we only last saw each other when we were 16 it would be like no time had passed and that every irreconcilable difference we had was resolved.
we’d enjoy the mountains together, taste cheeses, drink wine, and wonder why we’d left so much time lost to nothing.
his country would smell like mine and i’d think that absolutely everything i’d ever wanted from life stemmed from his approval.
unbeknownst to me, years later i’d actually fall in love, shatter my world into jagged fractures and hope that i’d meet another boy there. i’d try to get internships, look at apartments, figure out how to emigrate, all in the hopes that one day i’d stumble across a boy i was never supposed to be with.
i’m sorry if you’re still reading this. and i’m sorry that life can be so terribly sad.
i hope that one day i can visit this country that has connected me with humans who have taught me so many things and shaped me into who i am.
tales from the cove 