“Love, the bomb in her back pocket.”
She reads the words he has written and a silent bass drum vibration hums in the back of his neck.
It’s a violent poem, a love poem without all the mothers and card games and sitcoms and all its really saying is love over and over again but he remembers when she said that people abuse the word and that theve made it into something its not. And he agreed. So instead of writing the word he wrote words like cancer and fuck and Stockholm syndrome because really all words mean love.
“I love it” she tells him.
“How do you come up with all these crazy ideas and acully go through with them to make something?”
“I’m not sure. I guess its just easy for me to do right now. Like all the ideas were there the whole time but something in my life needed to change for me to see them.”
“So what changed Mr. poet?”
He thinks of a dramatic response like a british actor would say in a final death scene like:
“Love you know what changed” Or:
“Love, we were both the change”
but instead of following his impulsive high school heart he just says:
“I’m not really sure, maybe the seasons”
“Really? The seasons? My ass. How could you possibly blame the seasons, nobody pays attention to the seasons we just put up with them. You are so full of shit.”
He loves when she treats him like a good friend and not someone she needs to be careful with.
“Seasons my ass” she says and they laugh.
“But seriously what changed?”
“I am serious! It’s the seasons, you know? Like winter indoors felt all safe and alone but now its summer and spring never really happened you know? Like I was in some limbo where my body was being passed down from world to world until some guy in a hood found the right planet for me.”
“Stop it, your not writing poetry right now, were just talking. You don’t have to be anything else around me. I just want you to be you.”
“I don’t think who I am really matters right now. Like my entire life before this summer was all just a worry about how people saw me, like I was constantly trying to hide all my childhood toys. And I think for the first time in my life I am really a child.”
“Your still doing it. Seriously, nothing in life is that complicated where you need to constantly paint a picture to justify it.”
“I know but that’s just it you know? Its really not complicated and Its right there in front of us impossible to grab and we want to be a part of it so bad but we just are in the end. I don’t know, maybe the artist in me just wants to trick it into wanting me the same way.”
“But your already alive so what more could you want?”
“Nothing, I could die right here.”
“Well that’s depressing.”
They lay on their backs on the picnic table. He looks deep into the sky in the endless afternoon and watches a jet leave a trail. “Every plane is a god” He thinks to himself.
“I think you should get your head checked out. Seriously when I first met you, you were a fucking mine field, always apologizing and rephrasing whatever you said. But now your all calm and confident. Seriously you? The hypocondriac who would believe web md if it told you the symptoms meant leprocy. Bullshit. Just tell me, what changed?”
“You really want me to say it?”
“Oh come on we both know what it is so just say it.”
“But if we both know what it is then why say it?”
“JUST SAY IT!” she says straddling him and punching him on the arm for all the world to see.
“But I don’t need to say it, you’re the one who’s supposed to say it.”
“Why follow learned roles?”
“STOP IT YOU DUNCE, JUST SAY IT!”
He looks her in the eyes and they both grin like maniacs. Their hands are clasped like a grade school game of mercy and neither will scream the word but just tolerate the pain.
“Ok here goes” he says taking a deep breath.
“What changed is that that people started focusing too much on MJ’s antics and less about the genius of his music.”
“FUCK YOU!” she says punching him again.
“IM SERIOUS! WHEN HE DIED I DIED AND LITTLE BABY MICHEAL DIED TOO!”
She pins his hands above his head and kisses him.
And he could write the word a million times over trying to make meaning of her intention but he knows she's right about one thing, nothing is really as complicated as it seems, so with this in mind her says it back.
She folds the violent poem and puts it in her back pocket and maybe one day it will come true but until then loaded guns are just loaded guns, until then its nuclear bomb and cancer and war and famine and both hell and high water.
Until then words are just words and they all mean love because no one word could ever just simply say it.
