secondguessing-reality

[secondguessing-reality]

I will order a toddler sized casket for you, but don't ask me to share my feelings.

I will get your mother's funeral flowers, but don't tell me to open up.

I will pick your brother's procession clothes, but please... don't tell me to emote.

Sometimes the silent tongue is the strongest.

[secondguessing-reality]

Oh, what a plot twist you were.

[secondguessing-reality]

I feel it come over me like losing the feel of your bones. I am jellyfish and kitten weak, as though I would fall through your hands if you tried to hold me.

I am a wraith when I am like this, almost invisible. If I look in the mirror I may be gone.

[secondguessing-reality]

Tongues swirling

Teeth grazing pouty lips

With hungry, intentional bites

Breathing in and out in rhythm

Leaning into delicious sighs

As strong hands grasp my hips

Hands clasped in hair

Savoring this delight.

[secondguessing-reality]

I love you both in spite and because

You have convinced me of the truth.

Truth of souls linked, the poetry

Of you and I, intertwined.

My love, if judgement day comes

And an eternity from now I rise in ash

Out of the lashing waves of the sea, soul bearded with mussels;

I will see you standing there

Effervescent in your funeral clothes

And I will recognise you still.

My love, I will smile when I see you

And I hope as you make your assent you will

Look down at me for a moment, stop,

And smile back

And beckon me.

[secondguessing-reality]

Manifested Wrong

Written privately some time in December 2022:

What really happened, as of summer 2023:

You’re here. You’re finally here on my side of the country, in my city where you always said you’d be. I’m here with you, not living together yet but I made it, and you did too. We’re dating, we’re together. We speak daily, see each other a few days a week unless we’re busy - which happens to be often but at least we get a few days.

This is cute. You moved in immediately, and not only do we spend time together every single day, we sleep together a few nights a week. We speak all the damn time! <3

Sometimes you come over just to watch me with housework while I sip wine and have music playing in the background. These nights we spend together end in us tangled up together. Sharing details about our day as you help me put away dishes and place a kiss on my neck.

Oh, my beloved. Things turned out so much better than I imagined. I come home from work and everything I have piled on my to-do list is done already, thanks to you. When we spend the evenings together there's nothing to be done EXCEPT become wrapped up in each other. When we're home, we get so absorbed in our love that we don't even have time to get through videos and craft projects like we said we would. We're just too into each other that anything else seems almost like a distraction from our endless conversations.

On the weekends we hang out with our friends, with my sister and her family, my fiancé, or just with each other. We go places, do activities, find new places to try, all the fun things we said we’d do together. We have dinner at the fancy restaurants I like, and we find new cafes constantly. I take you to Rise or Asa's and you brag that nothing is better than NY bagels. It makes both of us laugh.

We definitely spend more time with each other than with anyone else. I'm happy to report that everything else is true, except I haven't taken you to a bagel shop here, yet. Soon!

I show you all my favorite spots in the suburbs that I call my home, a place that always felt solid and familiar. Sometimes we go out to Milwaukee to visit my family, spend time with my aunts, uncles, and cousins. I’m not afraid of introducing you, especially to my mother's side. Seeing us in the dynamic doesn’t worry me as I thought it once would.

I've shown you many places that hold meaning to me. I feel lucky I've gotten to see similar places to you. The family that has met you has loved you.

Sometimes we go out East to visit your family, your friends. Sometimes it’s for cons, sometimes it's just back to the Island for little weekends, occasionally it's for the City. We watch sunsets, we walk by the beach, I make an excuse to touch seawater every single time I get near it, you tell me about historically significant buildings and landmarks we pass, we share street food, I point out wildlife. You take my hand as we walk through the villages telling me this is the best love you’ve ever had. 

We've been back twice so far. This prediction was surprisingly accurate! Look at it! Everything came true. Well, take me back to the city for another day of adventures.

We share our traditions, or culture, stories from our upbringing and what its like to be raised by parents raised by immigrants. Things I thought most people wouldn’t understand but you do. The good, the bad, the ugly, the dirty, and the beautiful parts.

In the nights we stay up talking, joking, having sex, watching Netflix, laying next to each other in blissful comfort. We trust each other. I never thought it was possible to trust someone this much, I thought it was a myth, that it was something I only read or see on TV but you make it real. The closeness, the vulnerability. I overcame aversions because I want to be with you more than I’m afraid of being vulnerable. We learned from each other. The lessons we knew we needed to learn. You helped me to rely on others, to be open with others, to ask for help and let people help me. With my fierce love and adoration, I hope I'm helping you learn how to see the greatness within yourself. We’ve grown with each other, becoming better, stronger for each other all with the intention to continue to grow with and for each other.

Wow, okay. All true. Plus a plethora of pets. We've been through so much else the last few months, but when you look at it from December's perspective, I had no idea the depth of our bond could take us this far, and almost too easily.

I open up to you in ways I haven’t opened up to people before. And the best part, you don’t look at me like I’m crazy, or that I’m from another planet. Even if you thought as such you never make me feel alien for it. I don’t need validation, and you know that, but you let me find comfort in you without the fear of feeling like I made a mistake.

I let you be the weak one when you need to be. You want to be strong for me because I AM strong for you and for myself, but you know when to put away the façade and take a break. We lay down on the couch, your head on my chest as I play with your hair. Your long, silver, cloud-soft hair that I love so much. You talk as if no one is listening, opening up about things you keep buried deep. I respect your boundaries and you respect mine but we ask each other questions and tell each other our concerns without having any worry.

And when we look at each other and into each others eyes, we know it, better than we’ve ever known. We’re in love, and we always will be.

This is what I imagined for us. Prayed for. Beseeched the old Gods to grant for us. And it's true, except...

It's so, so much better than I dreamed.

[secondguessing-reality]

Believe me or don't

Hold me or don't

Calm me or don't

Hurt me or don't

Hit me or don't

Ruin me or don't

Just whatever you do

Love me

[secondguessing-reality]

open a pixelated window in my palms to vainly

pacify the pacing in my brain.

Basically I'm like what happens if you give cocaine to a cat as I sit

Perfectly still--my superpower is the

Appearance of sedation

While I'm screaming. Wrenching the ghosts down and tethering them into brutal submission.

Anyway

Welcome to my white wall face, feel free to project

Whatever movie you would like to see while the power holds.

We have had electric storms of late...and my arms are lightning rods, unfortunately.

the sizzle

You'd think there would be screaming since I'm

on fire but five melted jackets and a bevy of burn scars should tell you I've always craved heat

No matter the cost

[secondguessing-reality]

I think there is some humiliation in admitting how important we believe our suffering

- it is not -

it is common, as plain as sleep or the ever-eroding human will  against the context of truth.

There will always be darkness.

Do you even remember light?

We are similar, we know the faint touch of illusion, the fragile strain of dolorous bells without color, the sighing that turns us blind into the harshness again

- we tire in our effort of naming; forgetting abundance, we are threads tied to lost things-

the embarrassment is in trying to not add my voice to it, -

I do not want to be seen

[secondguessing-reality]

You're breaking my heart into petals, he cries

His deadly confidence ambient in me

No time left now for rumination.

I am pursued by the hunter of roses

And he will never, ever let me go,

Even as he's tortured by the thorns

That I've embedded in his soul.

You're breaking my heart into petals, he cries,

My own heart for the dream I would bless him to see.

I never intend to be ruthless

Cruelty seeps from my lungs like ricin and cyanide -

Bittersweet, corrosive from the inside out

To one who has so long been suffering.

Still, the patience of a saint is costly -

The hunter of roses will not let me be,

No matter if my nature destroys him.

You're breaking my heart into petals, he cries

My weary heart for the dream I would bless him to see.

[secondguessing-reality]

He kissed me then,

His mouth still clinging to the tang of the sea;

His eyes holding promises, forever, devotions,

And me.

[secondguessing-reality]

A Prayer

I hope that in the time that life allows me to be by your side I can be a source of deep and inexhaustible joy for you.

May this precious couplet that we have formed help us move forward and see new horizons, dream new dreams. Clarify our vision by being crystalline and spotless mirrors of each other. Always whole, yet more when together.

May all forms of love abound between us and may kindness, respect and admiration always color every interaction. Let us never close our hearts even if there are times it's hard to keep them open. May truth uninterruptedly flow between us but not cruel truth. Honesty filled with love and empathy.

Let us continue to do more than hear, but truly listen to each other without prejudice, without judgement, supporting each other while respecting each other's decisions. Let us be an endless source of good for each other and the world.

May trust grow and grow strongly between us because we have an unshakable faith in the good that beats in the soul of the other. We have seen it, we feel it, we live it daily.

Let us always be generous with our smiles and let us share without hesitation everything that comes our way. I propose to you that we live a sacred, benign, wise, and complete love, so that if one day we must part in body, we will have no regrets and only sacred and eternal memories will remain.

May our story never end. So mote it be.

[secondguessing-reality]

I think there are fault lines on the tip of my tongue.

My body is tectonic; you can see the cracks up close.

Today is an earthquake day.

There is a horrible groaning coming from inside me and I can’t stop shaking.

There are canyons ripping their way through my bones.

Today is a day where I get lost within myself.

I wind up somewhere lodged in between my ribs and I ache for sunlight.

I am pounding on the lining of my chest, trying to get out, but no one realizes.

They mistake it for a heartbeat.

This is a kind of shatter no one notices.

From a distance, no one knows the plates shifted.

My body is tectonic; you can see the cracks up close.

[secondguessing-reality]

You loved me somewhere in fairytales without dragons and magic carpets — it probably started with a once upon a time and ended with the prince falling for the witch instead.

You loved me somewhere in a mess of tangled orbits billions of lightyears away from us — it probably started with immature flirtations and banters and ended with my lips on your neck and your hands on my thighs.

You loved me somewhere in burial grounds where hopeless dreams survived — it probably started with a winter paramour laced around a losing battle and maybe for me, that's still more than enough.

You loved me somewhere in my unfinished drafts — it probably started with a loneliness shared through texts, until we ran out of cigarettes to fetishize, but we'd still be there and I'd still write about you until I ran out of things to write about.

You loved me in all these nonexistent somewheres, darling. You loved me in reveries tucked away in the corners of my mind, in ripped love letters lost in a midnight gust, in the unread prologues of dusty books and eyelash wishes that came true.

You loved me in all these places, darling, but the real fantasy?

You love me here, too.

[secondguessing-reality]

Your mouth devours mine

as if my saliva was the sweetest nectar.

Breathless, we part, not without a struggle

For your desire is not to be contained to my mouth alone.

Your ravenous hands are not to be left behind

as they caress or strike the curves of my body shamelessly.

But, then again...

Why should there be shame for something as wonderful as this?

Go ahead, try to gorge yourself on me

and I shall try in vain

to get my fill

of you.

[secondguessing-reality]

When I'm weary

I don't want to sleep, because in my slumber

I can't look into your eyes

hear your low voice

or caress your chest.

So let me stay awake until sleep takes me

kicking and pouting away from you.

Until morning.

[secondguessing-reality]

Sensei

Teach me the grammar of your kisses

How they are constructed

How they are punctuated

And all of their rules and idiosyncrasies, until just a glance speaks volumes

Teach me how your tongue spells my name

The curves of each letter

Connected cursively to another

Until I no longer know where any end or begin and my eyes roll back

Teach me to read the story of each one

Kisses of kindness and passion

Kisses of sorrow and intention

Until I know your thoughts through your kiss alone