I debated telling you this:
if I have a choice,
I want to die in my sleep.
That’s the problem with paper letters.
You never got this message.
I waited for you to tell me everything was going to be ok
that you had found a place where darkness met silence
a purpose to want, a way to find the deepest peace.
Defined by absent space
cracks found between nightly bodies
our touch unspoken conversations
marks and manifestos of eternal devotion.
It’s been a rush, as in glamour or gold.
This week the morning sky met the Bay by gently laying on top of itself. Low-hanging clouds smelled of cheap cologne, saturated with the kind of hope that only comes from peer pressure or digital capitalism or the start of a new year. The price of oil is less than $50/barrel which means the Financial District’s transactions have had less swagger. Instead calculated bets are placed on commodities like complex sugars, protest, Taylor Swift, and war. Pipelines born from speculative fiction landscapes are on pace to divide community from livelihood.
What if what I’ve been wanting is to find love in that space found between deep breaths? A capacity just beyond the quiet terror of behaving. A boundary traced around dangerous desires.
