like a sturdy red wagon built for carrying orchids

FROM January 17, 2005

Outro: in backwards form, forward, backwards, forward or backwards. The end and the beginning overlap. Hale wisdom says to fling it far and strong like a frisbee, not a boomerang, and then, and then, there will be only silence, me, and now.

1. Time to turn off the white noise. It is all right to do so. I so do not want to be loving right now. What I want, what I really really want, what I really really really really want, is to put words together to make sense. I want to put words together so they pile pretty and rickety, with a graceful crunky choreography. Here is what I love: grace, crunk, and choreography. And words. I want the words to bump up against each other until they are soft. I want them to smoosh apart. I want to keep those parts and add, not subtract. That is love. And words and love are all there is. And vulnerability is the car idling outside. It will wait until I step through my front door, even forever.

1. It lies there, and you can't tell if it's a branch or a body
Just lying there, skulking, crumpled.

2. We both talk a lot of smack about changing our hairdos, but neither of us actually do. You still have a swoop of man bangs hanging off the side of your face, the sk8r boi that keeps you feeling antique and untouchable, and I still have the ringlets bobby-pinned to my face like a halo, but more like a helmet. Like when we met. Maybe it means we will grow old together, or maybe it just means we are old now.

3. I want to. Here is the admit, the constant sickly admit. I want to, but I stow it away out back, where it's not easily visible. It's not that accessible. It's not really all that typical. It's just a secret stowed away for the limping days in front of us, to be split down the middle with two conclusions: One is a branch. The other is a body.

3a. I wrapped it in a sheath of cotton and stowed it in a cedar box so its smell does not leak, I shoved it in the ground in a hole dug for potatoes so it would collect the musty scent of soil and masque, I axed it into two so it was easier to hide. One side says branches, the other says bodies. The jury is still deliberating. The jury already knows the answer. I am breathing now, breathing hot earth.

4. Everything else was too big to chop up.

1. So they carved out their cores. Wielding secrets like a scythe in strike mode. Fear-frozen and did not feel. Loving only words and purging to stay alone. Like life would leave somebody dead. Welcome to stop.