WING【翼】

TW: THIS STORY CONTAINS CURSING AND CONSENSUAL SEXUAL THEMES/REFERENCES

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I run my hands through your hair again.

It is so soft that it drives an ache through my heart.

I wish my ribs were softer

so when my heart thumps against them, they would not hurt so.

At least then I would be able to do without that physical pang, pang, panging against my most longed for desire: that I overcome this love for you

it causes me a persistent sighing that is near as troublesome as an obstinate coughing

whose root cause is a love sickness so deeply sunk into my lungs

like to a disease’s sequelae:

you will stay with me for all my life.

In pervasive thoughts,

you come to me as you were in the beginning,

an ardent lover,

softer than the fresh water,

in which you bathed me,

now you come to me only

as a milliard of poems that strike me as I walk through the East Village in a particularly cold autumn;

A chill runs through me,

as the stray, salt tears do not warm me.

Why did it hit me so hard?

These hard-hearted stones that wear me away as I walk the street;

rushing so quickly to get away from the ghost that blows through me.

I want your touch.

I want your soft gaze;

Turn it on me again.

When you kiss my soft inner wrist,

with lips so silky

and palms so large as trees,

rough as the fruit they bear;

do it again,

please,

lace with your kisses,

weave me bracelets with the pearls of your teeth,

and promise me again

that you will buy me the gold and diamond,

which you can’t afford on your salary,

later,

when I’ve moved into your apartment.

Horns and geese and their endless honking;

then the stray music of bodega cats

of a street musician

as I cross over to the lower Westside.

Your hair is my instrument that I play in the tender orchestra of our lovemaking.

It is Kundera.

It is the unbearable lightness of being with you.

It is the kundalini as you guide me to heaven.

It is that mix of our moaning;

It is our: ‘Cum with me again, my love.’

that vibrates through our bodies

that thrum in my chest.

It is that cry of ‘Take me with you.

‘We were like two birds that share one wing. So how could you leave me here, my angel?’

Can you not see how my bleeding heart languishes?

I feel as though I called out in the Garden of Eden

and only God’s voice echoed against those boughs we rested under in answer.

He said,

“I made him just for you as you supplicated me to;

Indeed, creation is my job,

and I did give and take away,

And now you tell me,

‘It is better to have never loved at all than to have loved and lost?’

“Do not eat such bitter fruits,

nor let that sweet love ancien curdle in your heart;

Do not leave it to rot in here

and do not let it host a foul army of vile worms,

do not let hatred eat so many holes in your

Sweetheart,

my Garden is barren to you now,

this love will bear you no fruit.”

A stone fruit grows outside of that place;

It is the rock which weighs me down to this earth, to this life.

It broke the heart of my wing when life hurdled this sh-t at me;

that which keeps me from flying to you as quickly as I love to;

Winter’s hand runs up my spin,

why does summer never run its finger down the backs of lonely former lovers?

Why doesn’t this world create an imitation of your warm touch?

Of your large hand on the small of my back?

My hands are red,

my nose is watering,

my face is flushing,

and I am still feverishly in love with you.

Down even to my guts,

I am so sick of your loss.

I still cannot stomach the thought of loving anyone,

no one but you;

even when I am as hungry for love

as to silently beg on this bumpy path to the Unseen in the sky.

If you came back to the Garden of our love,

if you came back to earth,

if you came back to life,

if God gave me what he seldom gives anyone,

if he listened to this prayer at all,

I would be sweeter to you.

I would kneel only at the foot of God

and of you.

I would not kiss flowers and whisper in their ears: ‘I love you.’

This perfumed love,

this reek of lilies,

would not cling to you the way I am.

What would we have been?

What fruit would we have born?

Would it have been a girl or a boy?

Would it have looked like you?

Couldn’t you have left me that behind?…

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It is there that my diary entry petered off.

A dying art form, script,

I can barely read my own hand;

My love line;

I never would have thought my life line would have turned out this way.

I cannot come to grips with this,

I am engaged,

but I cannot let this letter go.

My lips are pursed,

shut tight as I kiss the top of it

like I did your forehead that night you pretended to sleep.

You played Cupid and I played Psyche.

I turned on the lamp next to our bedside table and gazed at that sleeping face.

Your eyes fluttered, my butterfly, just like when we first met.

My secret garden where you landed on my tongue and sucked the nectar.

You are where my heart bloomed.

I turned off the lamp.

In the morning, you went to work as if nothing had happened, and I laid on my side half-a-day, tears falling, sulking in the shade,

trying to get back last night;

Couldn’t you have said something before you left?

When you got home, you brought flowers.

I kiss it with such a broken glass heartedness,

with the same heart clenched reluctance

as when I kissed your forehead while pretending you were just asleep in that box.

I can’t believe I’m getting married.

I’m sorry, but I really want children

and he wants all the same things as me.

And you can’t give me that anymore

and now I’m crying these blaggard’s tears.

___________________

“I like this one. You don’t look as fat,” my mother says.

“No. I’m just sucking it in, Mom.”

“Oh. Well, I didn’t mean your stomach. This one covers your shoulders more. They don’t look as wide. They won’t be able to see you spilling out over the sides of it.”

“Okay…”

“Get that puss off your face. I don’t need to hear attitude. I don’t need to buy a dress. I can leave and you can pay for your own dress if you want.”

I close my eyes. I don’t know what to do. I have never been able to say anything to her and even silence is not the answer when dealing with her.

‘I don’t know why I invited her. Do I just want to seem slightly normal to his family?

‘Why the f— did she offer? She’s the one that kept pushing and pushing to pay for it. I told her I didn’t need her to pay for it.’

“You know this is supposed to be a happy time for me and you’re ruining it. This is supposed to be enjoyable for you. This should be enjoyable for me.” My mom was crying, “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me. I flew out here and you’ve been rude to me the entire time.”

“Mom, please…”

“No!” She flagged over one of the store attendants.

“Excuse me, ma’am! Could you bring me something?” She was rubbing the snot off her face.

The woman picked up a box of tissues that was on the table right behind her and handed it to her. “Oh, thank you!”

“No problem. Is everything alright here?”

“Yes,” I said.

“No!” She turned to the shop attendant. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get out of here. My daughter is acting terribly. I’m sorry she’s making a scene in your store.” She burst out and began to cry harder than before, half looking at the shopgirl and waiting for her to take her side.

The woman looked at a loss; her face looked absolutely terrified. “Oh no, it’s alright. Hah ha.” As soon as she said it, the woman rushed off.

I couldn’t take it anymore and then it hit me, ‘I literally have money now. I just got into the head space of when I didn’t have any money and couldn’t get away from her when she came here.’ I ran my hand down my face.

She flipped from tears to anger. “I’m going to call your father. He can deal with you. I’ve got to get out of here.”

She was going to say something else, but I cut her off:

“Just go. I’m just trying to buy a wedding dress. Please, go. I’m begging you.”

She said some things that I didn’t care to hear at a volume which could be heard by everyone in the store, while wildly crying all the way out the door.

I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I heart the little bell on the door ring as it opened and closed.

The woman, nervous, made her way back to me. “Are you alright?”

“Yes.”

I want to run my hands through those wheat fields of your hair.

___________________

There was a piece of land by my childhood home. For years, and probably to this day, that was for lease and was never let.

It has tall grasses as one walks into the woods and where one can view a beautiful lake while remaining hidden from the view of passersby. On a night where the moon had been particularly luminous,

we went to watch the stars.

We were like vines, tangled together so fervently and so firmly against one another.

I touched that hard chest that rose up like a mountain and left my hand there. I ran my hand through those mountains. I ran my hands through your hair.

I whispered in your grass knotted hair: “More than in the time when wheat and wine is abundant.”

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Coda

Made love to in the woods;

my ex-boyfriend points to the full Sturgeon moon:

Look at you, my Moonflower, you’re in full bloom, it might be too early to say, but this night, you’re glowing, glistening dew:

You love me.

Oh, my Pisces,

Do not point out my sweat,

unless your kisses rain down on me,

but it is almost dawn

and I don’t want to get caught in the red-faced storm of strangers raining down curses

while we’re still skinny dipping in a pool of our clothes,

So shut up and get dressed, you Dumbass, Dumbass, Dumbass!

Of course, I love you.

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