I told you there aren't many ways to write a love song without ending up with a short list of war crimes. That an emergency is after all just five girls saying I told you so. The way you read the instructions to suicide and come up with a poem. That a day without moving would, above all, require a strong mind. A family loan. To exist is to make a private event out of the sea rise. Imagining yourself on a radio show, explaining your childhood in punchlines. Everyone impressed by your humble beginnings. By the way you always carry a plastic bag around, trying to preserve some nature. The biosphere in your briefcase. I fell in love that very day. Writing from a city I’d never been in. Wanting my old body back. If you insist on writing a love song, make sure the first line is stolen. Accuracy in act. I told you there aren't many ways to cross a border without turning your head. That maybe the key to choosing the right partner is whatever Teen Vogue has to say about it. That the light-flashes may well be a warning, but they’re also one of life’s main attractions. And if you and your friends want to hold a funeral, the dead will come rushing. The cover band sponsored by NATO’s suburban plan. Back through the body and into the railroad. One final time. I told you that the dots between intention are better understood from the grave-digger’s viewpoint. At the sunrise shift. And if you have nothing better to do, I can stay right here with you and watch.

Did I ever show you the unattached pause between confession? The prayer migrained from a child tugging it left, then right. You tell me the child is someone you knew, and I resist the urge to say: what a small world. Any day now I’m going to wake up angry enough to haunt you. Drink the battery spill from a wine glass.  But when our friends started dying, you made a point to reach out. Said: I’m glad it wasn’t you. Said if they can fit an ocean into a headline, then surely you can find a way to touch it. To jump into the caves and find something singing. Whether or not you know what a note is.

God spends the entire night locked in the bathroom stall. Engraving all their clichés into the door with an army knife. And you, sat next to them, repeating: I don’t believe you, I don’t believe you. There’s an argument to be made for worship, but that’s not what I came here to tell you. Some days you have to push in with everything empty. Let the bartender know you’ve been cheated. How you meant to say something much more eloquent. How Angus is outside, smoking your cigarette, rolling down his symbols. The banality of youth taunting: watch me! Pushing a hit from her molars. Silver tongues rushed over a gam, asking: Are you down about the economy, darling? Are you feeling tragic? Look, I just wish you wouldn’t grind your teeth like that, not during a recession. It’s enough as it is that everyone’s front-lining some band. Some postmodern collective. And worse, and worse, you keep trying to climb over my back and sing me your song. It’s the third time tonight. Still, I would like to make everything about us. Bad mouth every flower; roses, lilies, the whole garden. Only Lucky is ringing out a crane’s neck in the red room, and I’m getting all sentimental about it. Waiting for the valves to go off in Tijuana. Knowing you’d like to believe them. You only get five minutes to teach yourself how to be gentle.

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