kill your darlings

nyc

[joniblue]

we only get to borrow people like library books, like shoes last night was like a little appetizer of the meal that awaits me at some point that is: losing you it certainly didn't taste good (bring it back to the kitchen! try again!) but I know I'll have to have it another time, or now

we only get to borrow people and so why do I feel like I must get to keep you forever? that is: you made me feel that way but there's always a rug to pull, so you gave it a little tug (I don't know why, to be honest) but at least I know where I stand, sense of balance turned sour like milk

we only get to borrow people though I'll say, you were one of the finest I'll try to remember the world without you because in the end, all I have are these two eyeballs, two ears two hands to hold yours for a moment

a moment, as if that's all there is there is, there is, there is

[joniblue]

you in the blue dress

with the camcorder, the outfit you hadn't decided to wear until the night before (my own dress, planned and tailored meticulously) I am in the business of careful preparation I wanted you to come down the stairs

if you weren't in France, maybe we could have continued the conversation a cup of tea in Brooklyn, just us two I could say what I fantasized about in Theresa's kitchen (though she definitely wouldn't have wanted me to use her countertops in the business of loving you) your body as a soft question I could answer

another dream, left for another lifetime the ghost of a ring on my finger I am in the business of mild regret you'd understand if I could tell you

[joniblue]

we don't speak anymore, but I've always been afraid of reading your obituary I don't know how to not care though I told you to fuck off years ago and I stand by the decision I've always been afraid of reading your obituary maybe it's not my right anymore, but I check up on you all the time I know you're loving pluribus it's exactly your kind of show, but I don't want to speak to you about it I just want to know that I'm right I've always liked being right about you even when it meant the end of us I just want to know that you're okay because I've always been afraid of reading your obituary because I know it's not far-fetched to think that you've thought about it what it would be like, I mean if I read your obituary the way I would cry and cry and maybe it would make you feel good that is, if you were still alive and I hope that you are I hope that you are I hope that you are

[joniblue]

lydia

she kicked her shoes off, tucked her knees up on the seat, under her chin at the metropolitan fucking opera her red dress clung to her in a way that would have made me self-conscious, but she didn't care nothing but smiles and warmth the kind of girl you'd love to run into drunk in a bar bathroom and maybe you'd catch a strand of her hair between your fingers, tuck it behind her ear a quick slip, a change in the vibration because you can't say I would kiss you because you can't say would you want that just why are your bare feet out at the opera and she says just live a little

[joniblue]

My sister in Seattle became an energy healer which is sort of like saying there's a place in her that I cannot access, which is old news Comically thick walls defend her open eyes I don't think I've ever really seen her or maybe she's just never let me I wonder what it even means to energy-heal I wonder why she was so dismissive of my teenage religious phase I should have told her then she'd become an energy healer And say: see, we all have interests that don't make any fucking sense So maybe just take a breath and what if we got to know each other?

[joniblue]

wilmington

each quiet morning accented by the way you joke with your old friend a scramble up the mountain, playing games or speeding along in his grandmother's boat watching you cling to the rope at the end a drive to Brattleboro just because we could and ordering a cinnamon roll for the table before buying a book at the store a fire in the fireplace each night after we grill corn, plate sandwiches take a walk and stare into the lake with more light in the sky at night there's something I'm still weighing as long as things still keep making sense as long as I can still be myself Raponda clear as crystal, new to me see a fisherman and his evening catch there's always more I have to know

[magpiegirlforever]

need a t-shirt that says i had a weird heavily symbolic dream last night please don't talk to me

[joniblue]

it's funny to feel desperate for you after so many months of security, but with the taste of loss on my tongue suddenly anything is possible

and I think you aren't taking this dinner seriously even though it's my birthday, I want you to ask me about my goals, but later on in bed everything is much better and I wonder if that's how you prefer to express yourself, which reminds me of someone I can never compare you to to your face there are some things that just have to go un-mentioned

I've been taking you for granted but it's horrifying to know that you perceive me - you've been looking at me all this time while I looked away and thought of other things it's bold to think that you'd want to marry me after all I've said, but maybe the certainty will come

[joniblue]

I have dreams about you though, hilariously, they're never about sex, just about friendship yours, mine, and hers over and over again subconscious recipe-testing, trying to get the combination right

dreams about transit, rail, ubers, labyrinthine city streets always trying to get somewhere I can never quite reach like into your life again like into her mind, somehow

I wake up gasping and annoyed honestly, I didn't ask for this I want to know her, but I can't though I think that I could I want to know you, and I don't and also already do

[joniblue]

from you I learned how to clean my ears, that sausages are pre-cooked, how to play Ex Libris, sitting in the warm living room of one of your Princeton friends. I never said that your songs were too cerebral, thought I wanted to. the person I am now eclipses the person that you used to know, and I'm sure it's true the other way around, I'm sure you've never dreamt about me, but maybe you have, we all have visions we cannot shake, I know I do, dreams like torture where you want me again. I never said that your coldness was too much for me, I didn't know that I needed to, that care didn't need to be earned. I still make a meal that I learned in your kitchen, some of my favorite songs I first heard through your speakers. we exist both as who we are now and how we once knew each other. even if I could go back there would be nothing and no one waiting for me there, just the song of unfamiliar birds, circling overheard, waiting for the kill.

[joniblue]

I've embraced on so many city streets there's hardly a poem to be written about it anymore but it still felt special to squeeze each other after we'd fucking slayed the grocery mission, closed the store down, and I won't see you on the 14th but that's not the kind of thing we need to do to love each other you just put your arms around me and I watched the walk signal count down and I know I'll see you soon and there will be something in your hand for only me to see

[joniblue]

it's true that I dream about you, so much so that it's hard to distinguish what's happened inside my head and what hasn't, because we've become friends a thousand times in my mind while I've slept, laughing and sharing stories, commiserating, stunned and delighted by our bond, but when I pass you on the street I have to pretend we've never met, which we actually haven't, and it gets tiring, I'm tired, I just wish we could call it what it is, which is a sort of tragedy because maybe I'll never know you, who knows if you'd even want to speak to me considering we've both fucked the same man and he chose you over me in the end, he's in the dreams too, often surprised you and I get on so well, sometimes offering his own acceptance at my return to his life in this way, my therapist would get a kick out of that, I swear he's not important to me anymore and the person that I dream about the most is you anyway, you who I've never met, do you even know who I am, do you wish you knew me a little, are we the same?

[joniblue]

put me down across the table, shake me until I feel something,

push and pull, bend and breathe,

ache, ache,

slower, see if I feel things too fast I can't

understand them I'm trying to work on this in

therapy I need two business days

to be able to call an emotion by its name,

they say that's how you take the power away,

the moon is in spotlight mode and the

leaves are dying I see them through the window,

it's winter soon and the wool coat is still packed away,

breathing, breathing, oh please

touch me again I can't take it

[joniblue]

so I've got a new crush

I've starting looking at your girlfriend as if I were in love with her too, the tone of her arms, the light in her eyes, her smile, her favorite things. I think this is an improvement over being in love with you, but I don't know if it's good, either. I've stopped feeling competitive, I've moved beyond competition into a world where I've admitted that you have a point, being in love with her, and I want in. I think about what it would be like to hold her in my arms, to kiss her on the lips. in these fantasies, I'm not sure where you are. maybe I only feel this way because in order for you to want me again I've got to have something you want, and if I could have her, maybe you would follow. or maybe you wouldn't, and then she and I could whisper in the night about all of the things about you that we didn't like, the little insults, the coldness, the self-absorption, and then we could make love and fall asleep knowing that you were somewhere far away, out of our lives. am I really so desperate to be understood?

maybe there's a world where it makes sense, maybe it just means my stubborn heart reaches for you in whatever way it can. but maybe it means I'm moving on, moving somewhere else, losing steam.

[joniblue]

thursday at the owl

There has been music about me made in this room, the walls and ceiling know that you used to love me. I once marveled that you were the only person who didn't see me as small, but now I am no longer small, and I don't remember what it was like to be another way. We're playing musical chairs with our shared neighborhood, living lives in elaborate parallels. I think of you more often than I should. There was never going to be a clean break, though I know you said you wanted one.

Your grandfather (now dead) bought me a book that is still on my bookshelf. Your dad's friend request to me sits unanswered in my Facebook account. I still have that photo booth strip you wrote about in that song, you wanted it gone, but I'm keeping it anyway. There is so much left behind that I don't know how to explain.

There has been music about me made in this room, the walls know that you used to love me, and so do I. There's nothing to be done but stand in it and breathe. I want to pass you at the corner store without a change in my heartbeat, but I haven't ever passed you at the corner store, so maybe I'll never know.

[joniblue]

grant gore

Once, I watched that statue of Grant get covered in snow. The town was still quiet, no one knew I was with you. If they had, they'd have known we were in that tiny apartment with the perfect shelf that matched the odd corner where no other furniture fit. I stayed to watch the snow fall, it was a time when no one had jobs. We slept in late and saw the snow-light dance on the ceiling, there was a couch that I cried on before I had the surgery. You once perched on the edge of the bathtub to look at me with longing, eyes so hot and bright that I left feeling frightened. Grant never lived in Brooklyn. I wondered then what inspired such a tribute, but I built monuments in my heart for you when I hardly even knew your name.

[joniblue]

it's your birthday month

I wore your necklace to the family function. I didn't think of you much except when my aunt asked where I got it from. I kept it in the first place because it felt like a gift from somebody who really knew me, who saw me as a writer, which I desperately wanted to be. I was a quiet person in the world but to you, I was known and beloved. I kept your necklace, I wear it to this day though now we do not speak. I twirl it on its chain and wonder how you are and what you'd think if you knew I still had it. Probably something incomprehensible, if we're being honest, but also something real, something true, something I would recognize.