When I take
Adderall I feel
connected to
my dad,
who takes it too,
although
I haven’t told him
we have this
in common
because I’m scared
he will judge me
or feel sorry
that I’m like him.
When you orgasm
around my hand
I feel connected
to you.
Yesterday,
you said Sometimes
I get so excited
it feels a little
bit like panic
‍and I nodded
and wanted
to say something
but didn’t.
I don’t know,
I just feel
like there’s soft dirt
at the bottom
of this river
and I love
stepping into it
together—
or even
not quite together,
like the way
I felt connected
to Henri Cole
when I first read
his poem
“Beach Walk”
(we fall,
we fell,
we are falling)
on the computer
in my cubicle
at my internship
in college,
and I thought
I don’t want
to spend my days
in an office.
‍Anyway, I do
spend my days
in an office now
and I read
Henri Cole
at night sometimes
and I love
making you cum
more than almost
anything
and I’m talking
to my dad
on Zoom later—
he’s getting surgery,
I’m scared,
and there’s a lot
we haven’t said.

No wharfage, no
soft edges, no more
ice cubes or chances
to be normal, nothing
left of the landscape
that’s photographable,
no imaginary friends
seated at the dining
room table
and certainly no soup there,
no fish in the river,
no miracles arriving
in the form of phone calls,
no signs warning children
of the dangers of falling
from windows,
no muscular sailors
who happen to be passing by
to catch the children as they fall,
no sailors at all,
no boats or water,
no gum wrappers left
to fold into smaller
and denser arrangements,
no faded bronze plaques
inscribed with history lessons,
no history, no ability
to silence the advertisements.
Are there some places
where love simply
doesn’t grow as fast
as it decays? And by places
I mean people. And
when you fall
asleep is when
I need you
most desperately, because
without your eyes on it this
whole town disappears.

I love the shape of our apartment
as I walk through it in near-total darkness.
I love walking slowly through that darkness
with my arms out, trying not to bump
into furniture. How many apartments
have I done this in now? I loved
them all. Or possibly I just loved
how they held darkness, slivers of streetlight
sneaking into the fortress, amplified and lent
personality by the darkness surrounding them.
Wherever you are is a country. Touch it softly
to make it stand still. Your hair getting caught
in my mouth all the time, like a tiny piece
of you calling—like a tree trying to speak
to a rock by dropping a pinecone on it.
It is my intention to listen, but my hands
keep giggling while reminding me
I don’t get to be a human being
for very long, as if this were the punchline to a joke
whose first half I missed. I arrived too late.
I typically arrive about three years too late.
I wish I had been able to sit in that white,
aromatic kitchen and look you in the face
but I was not ready. I was still on my way.
I was lingering inside the perspective
of the spider I noticed crawling
along the baseboard. You fried
an egg. Is it possible to change
who we basically are? Thank you
for serving me cups of lemon tea
with honey in it. Even though
such copious amounts of liquid
would no doubt drown the insect
I imagined myself to be, that was kind
of you.

“Fly Flying into a Mirror” was first published in Nashville Review and “Wind-Related Ripple in the Wheatfield” in Sixth Finch