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There are people here, man

by Gabbi Gilbert

The space between,

in inches and ounces, those are the closest we get. I read once That when we sit in a chair, the same chair at the same desk, after a long day of sideways glances and broken nails and misshapen memories, when we sit in a chair, we levitate, we float, the atoms dance under our asses and mellow out on the wood. Even so, I shift and nestle into impenetrable wood, almost wishing for it to snap underneath me, legs flail, arms panic, no thoughts left It’s like that with people. There are people here, man,

people I fantasize would be willing to crash into me, fall onto me like some cosmic rag doll, a plaything trained to love, trained to understand, trained to forgive, a person like the people here, man Because there were people there too, there to that place I can only call home because everyone else called it home, because that’s what it turned into, when the whole town froze, like the exhale that shudders in front of you, some ghost we’re too familiar with, too familiar to not call it home

(Maybe that’s just me)

Every time the air between people gets too thick, they run and you can feel the fruit on the trees shrivel up, start to die, the rush in the air when we don’t get what we want because we so rarely get what we want, the terrible humanly love of rejection For we love it, don’t we? So we can be harder, push harder, Feel harder

Every time the air between people never gets thin enough, we count the atoms on our lips, try to crush them together, try to destroy them, try to feel the explosions on our tongues, those “sparks” that everyone talks about, the pressure between muscle and skin and bone when you times them by two For there’s nothing like it, is there? Though we are taught to reject it, to ignore it, to Forget it

Like that blue string I pulled off a shirt I stole from one who borrowed from another who found from another. I tied it around my finger,

Like it would make you remember me when you get dressed in the morning and brush your teeth, put your toothbrush back in the mug next to your mother’s and remember your mother remembering me,

Like that blue that Bobby D was tangled up in, when his voice played through the speakers in your truck and I turned it up, pretended to sing like him, like his voice when he rhumes, “Was to keep on keepin’ on,

Like a bird that flewww,” carried until echoed until distorted until you hear it again, pull the string, tie it around, yeah, remember that

(Maybe that’s just me) Every day in class sit people who could understand, who could love. I admit. I play with that sometimes, fooling myself we already share secrets and secret special knowledge of each other’s bodies but I think they’re afraid to look me in the eye, I know, sometimes, I am. Funny How I’ve done this before, connected to people and things so easily without them realizing, like I’ve fallen at their feet and they step over That space between, those dancing atoms all over my face, their body a shadow over my spine and I end up Feeling okay. I wait for them to come to me. Every day in class sit people, man, people who are here for the same reasons I am and, for some malevolent reason, our paths stay parallel, Those inches and ounces that make up drops of sweat and my shoe size, just enough to spread us out, line is up, start the race, Feelings anticipated and deflated, like the air in our lungs. I’m told it’s the same, that we use to much of it, waste it, deface it, contaminate, pollute it. I hope I’m more like the air, wasted, defaced, contaminated, polluted, the air under your ass, the air that freezes in front of you, the air moved by flailing legs and arms panicked, the blue string cutting the circulation the air of unspoken connection, connect-connection, the air of fools and friends, and air that keeps this body running, the same air that keeps your body-these bodies running. This way, I’m connected to everything Even when I’m not.

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