?

I got a Valentine's Day in the post

a letter from the one I loved the most

but the words of love that this day has planned

were replaced with symbols. I couldn't understand

and the card fell from my hands to the floor

because I don't know what love is anymore.

I don't know what love feels like anymore. In the name of love I've been intimidated and confined, I've cried and begged, and all in the name of love gave it all because I thought this was it. That I wouldn't need it anymore, because someone loved me. Meanwhile, my mother and I argue on the phone and when we hang up she must love me a little less. Meanwhile, a neighbour is falling in love with me in a very strange display of actions and words. And the one I loved somehow as time elapsed spoke to me things that distorted love. The comfort of it was twisted out of shape, the dislocation of all its  component parts that I went out of my way to find again were scattered.


Sockets and bones and brain unhinged
just too short a distance away to unlock by
music box mouth, tip jar mouth,
ashtray mouth, spilled milk mouth.

VII-IX

VII. Skies stretch out to the bluest places you've ever seen if you are prepared to stay up all night and watch. Watch out, what's coming? There are endless insurmountable places that make a jigsaw puzzle out of the edges of what you think you know is coming, and the natural reaction is to prepare for the circumstances that seem to be inevitable, but the sand beneath the car tyres has become so soft, almost like flour, and you are pushing forward on puffs of air. You sneeze when the flowers open out their petals for bumblebees to make visits. It's much more scheduled than you'd imagine. These bees are probably better planners than human beings be.

VIII. In the road the space for a person is quickly accounted for. The person who felt their feet on the road for the last time on earth will not disrupt the data input. No transformations needed for this particular anomalie.

IX. People disappear and reappear and it might be personal and it might not be. That's what the road so far has taught me. You get from it what you put whole-heartedly into it. You listen so you learn. You help so you are held. The sky is bashful. I must stay here quietly for a while/