An earlier version of the following poem is also published in The Stonefence Review and Graphic Prosetry.
We crack our wrists in sync like we’re the beats
of a live performance.
Sometimes you’re the silence
in the pause
waiting for yourself to bloom lively into rhythm.
Sometimes you’re the silence
at the end of the song, when it’s late
& audience footsteps undulate
a bit like puddles;
once-filtered words come out
a bit mushy,
a bit scrambled like mixed drink.
I always wonder what you use to time yourself
because you bleed in & bleed out like ocean.
Fish swimming in, sliding through
the dancing kelp in a soundtrack with no volume,
the way you slip out of conversation like
calloused fingertips dragging across a keyboard,
the way you stretch me like a guitar string,
plucked & thrown pillow-melodies.
If I’m the music, you’re the hand,
& we make promises to the ears of the living.
You promise me we’ll both make sound
so long as it’s me that you’re playing.
I promise without words, but it’s enough.
I wonder if you’ve ever tried
to play a flute while underwater.
In my mind, you inhale & thrust your lungs
into the body of a singer.
The singer accepts this transaction as love,
like form of currency &
zips her dress up while she coos your name.
Then she blows bubbles, & the bubbles
tell their friends about you too,
& it goes like this until the body overflows,
& the water spills onto hot dry land,
& all the liquid & sound evaporates,
gets sucked into a thirsty cloud,
& so the whole ocean now is nothing except
the sound of your name in its mouth
as we dream to ourselves that
this catastrophe too must be music.
In the silence, I wonder what’s on your mind.
Calculations, maybe, clockwork counting, maybe,
because you could always count
because you could always count
on me to play.
I wonder
if you could ever sing a lullaby,
if you could write an anthem for nighttime,
because the thought of you is like a song
that sends me to sleep but still wakes me up,
as if you’re both the beginning & the end,
as if you’re the silence
before & after the music,
as if you’re everything in the music & not,
which would make you the equivalent of everything.
& so, I digress,
do you think every song is in love with its writer?
Does every measure love its ending?
Does every organism love its drowning?
Somewhere, underwater, a seahorse raises his champagne glass.
A toast, accompanied by crashing waves,
jazz that fizzles into steel tongue laughter.
Somewhere, a lobster grabs a microphone,
shoots a crab in the head with melody.
Does every tune end this way,
overflowing with musical doom?
Does every song end with the words,
“I’m in love with you,
and it scares me”?
Because, somehow, I think, I do.