what's your number?

 
i.
there is no way to know
that some people fit together
and others just don’t
when your only experience
is not fitting together,
and there is no way to gauge
your value, your worth
when your only experience
is being blamed by someone
who can’t face their own
ill-fitting skin.

ii.
but back to the first love, the catching-up
of the body with the mind,
the oldest candle held in silent vigil
somewhere in salty Fairfield air
smiling under weary, knowing eyes:
it ended with a kiss on the cheek
and a trimming of the wick.

iii.
we come to grips
with who we are,
who others are,
who we are with others,
and then who we were
and who they were.
maybe we don’t have
such strong grip after all
on who we can be.
I’ll take that to my grave.

iv.
sometimes
you just get the urge
to build a wonderful sandcastle
even though you know
the situation will always kill a sandcastle,
baking it til it collapses under its own weight.
sandcastles are only ever built
in situations which cause their explicit demise,
and they are always the most beautiful
at the instant before they fall
jarred awake by a 3am phone call.

v.
I don’t know where
the acting started
and where its other end hung colloidal in the ride,
biking down Commonwealth for the ten-dozenth time
in search of parts that intercalated seamlessly,
ignoring that they didn’t make any sort of bigger picture together.
it was always going to crash out of solution
but the keepsake photo of a suspension
always looks like a beautiful, opalescent solid.
I’ll always be nostalgic for laying on docks.

vi.
—my pillow floats little ragged edges of the scent
of someone I don’t want to remember—

vii.
and on,

viii.
and on,

ix.
and