#the night when they don't touch; the bagels before alex leaves; the cigarette and feeling like an italian diva; the joking;

[skylarbee]

milex and a poem

i read this poem and shed a few tears because it reminded me so much of them, because it is so them... so i invite you to suffer with me.

Friends with No Benefits, Megan Fernandes, Poem-a-Day, 2023

I now replace desire  with meaning.  Instead of saying, I want you, I say,  there is meaning between us. Meaning can swim, has taken lessons from the river  of itself. Desire is air. One puncture  above a black lake and she lies flat. I now replace intensity with meaning. One is a black hole of boundless appetite, a false womb, another is a sentence. My therapist says children need a “father” for language  and a “mother” for everything else. She doesn’t get that it’s all language. There is no else.  Else is a fiction of life, and a fact of death. That night, we don’t touch.  We ruin nothing.  We get bagels in the morning before you leave on a train,  and I smoke a skinny cigarette and think  I look glam, like an Italian diva. You make a joke at my expense, which is not a joke, really,  but a way to say I know you.  I don’t feed on you. Instead, I watch you  like a faraway tree.  Desire loves the what if, the if only, the maybe in another lifetime.  She loves a parallel universe. Or seven.  Meaning knows its minerals, knows which volcanic magma belongs  to which volcanic fleet. Knows the earth has parents. That a person is raised.  It’s the real flirtation, to say, you are not a meal.  To say, I want you  to last. 

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the author said this about it:

“This piece is about a friend. We drink martinis and talk poems all night. We have an energy easy to mistake for desire but that might instead mean something more earthbound. Desire is instructive. But she’s often instructing us toward some edge, toward some abyss. As I get older, I’m re-narrating the intense feelings I have for some people that don’t take the form of ravenous, cosmic, and consuming intimacies, but intentional, rooted, and durational ones. What’s better than the dumb luck of living at the same time as someone you truly admire? It’s so mortal and random. No cosmos could compete.”

#it's from miles' perspective too... #the night when they don't touch; the bagels before alex leaves; the cigarette and feeling like an italian diva; the joking; #the watching; the 'maybe in another lifetime'... #yeah #i don't have to say any more do i? #the poem itself and the author's explanation says it all #it's from a site called 'poets.org'. you can subscribe to their 'poem-a-day' and you'll get a new poem every day via email #i can only recommend it #alex turner #miles kane #milex #poem #friends with no benefits #megan fernandes #milex and