Primer for Monogamy
That I could use my life as evidence of love, that my examinations of self and subjectivity would end as more than cursory, as though I could find out by becoming the self I theorize; that my girlfriend and my boyfriend both belong in my writing, in my home, in my planning;
divorce/e looms large and hungry, a periphery for what my loves can look like over time, a primer for monogamy; every few months, I tumble into a new love: air signs and their embracement of fluidity; arrogant blond/es; femmes with too many jobs;
I can't remember not being in love,
the smell of new skins, the kind we forget and never are able to let go, how forgiveness is never just an afternoon, but a lifetime; I am petty beyond belief, like, you would never expect me to let you go but I do, loose my hands from the hot hook of your elbow under heat lightning exploding in the clouds above, thick night, towels damp bunched in backseat.
Let me go and learn to love, I hear but you deny begging, you deny waiting for hours outside my long flat house, wrestling my pit mix into holly bush, leaning into it, an abrupt and catastrophic kiss, then another.
When I microdose, I flit to every candle in my house and drape necklaces across full moon window smoking aloft, the gaunt promise of kinship caught. It's not over but I hope for the best while you jerk off next to me, one hand down my unbuttoned black jeans, me smoking out the window.
Later, I learn that this, for you, is love;
I am still learning what it is for me: forgiveness of my tortured body, slow breathing on cool floor, melon on the fire escape.
I eat for years, dream of a universal fatness, a belly beyond my own, a chubby cherubic world who can walk all evening, down past Houston, angling east towards the river. New York is not mine, but I am not into possessive love anyway; my girlfriend and her new boyfriend come over for wine and dinner.
Call me another orphan, a loose calendrical. On some level, Artaud is just a minor, bad on purpose, something I can flaunt:
(I'm just too much for you);
I can break away all by myself, for those of you who paused to let me finish, to allow me: in need of no allowance, instead, a taker: one who takes without shame, finishes whether or not you've freed yourself from the dim jungle of your body, mine is evergreen, trading breath with galactic earnestness, glitter carved into my trunk, graffiti from the liberated bodiless horde, a queer crowd spirited above.
When I forget to invite you, it isn't, when I hold you before