This is garbled and jumbled all over the place but I'm trying to make a point.
they sent postcards from all over the world,
strangers writing to the cancer ward /
you were swollen
and demanding / the reek of disinfectant
and the pastel colours and faded curtains /
do you remember the time
we promised to remember the time?
then we threw the ball into the sea
off that high rock in France
watched it float away?-
I do remember.
we promised we’d remember it together when we grew old
together, so for a while she held my hand
because there are no words for moments like this.
i didn’t know i was looking for you / but there you are
standing string-bean and tall and I imagined /
a skateboard, what your smile would be like,
and after a while
what it would be like to kiss you again?
or do something together that is uncommon
a second time
the Sufjan Stevens song comes to mind –
I’d do anything for you, everything for you -
you look beautiful when you sing, or when there’s
a cigarette filter between
a toothy smile,
even roughed up in the mornings
you look like something, like a concept without a word.
Here you are, and there are no words for people like you.
and to be touched by someone like that
and loved by someone like that, there are
absolutely no turns of phrase to express that you are
grateful, you are dreaming, you are lucky and so grateful /
it was you who got lucky / and when somebody
gives gives gives
and they inspire so much thought in you
for miracle-making of your own,
and they also happen to love you as well-
how can I ever thank him for that?
how can I thank you for something like that?
How can anybody find a way to say a thankyou like that?
you have a friend who is much older than you
and everything he’s been through / scarring invisible and not /
damaged everywhere and irrevocable.
But white turned black is not always just black
and you’ll see the flash of white
again and again, and the friendship is not blind
but when he sits with his eyes elsewhere and mind
somersaulting backwards / years of abuse and fights
and pain / waking up with a razor at your neck /
parents who didn’t want you /
foster parents who wanted to see you cry /
when he is reliving those past moments in my present
There is nothing to say because there are no words
for how to deal with memory,
deal with memories
hideous as those, painful in recall, sharp pieces
of a broken mirror
but clean as cut glass.
There are no words for moments like this.
There were no words for those moments,
and there are no words for these moments
and still, there are no words.
