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Finding phrases for feelings that began more than a year ago

June 26, 2014    |    0 COMMENT(S)

24
You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you've done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you're tired. You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and you're trying not to tell him that you love him, and you're trying to choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something you don't even have a name for.

— from "You Are Jeff" by Richard Siken


when I am in your presence I feel life is strong
and will defeat all its enemies and all of mine
and all of yours and yours in you and mine in me
sick logic and feeble reasoning are cured
by the perfect symmetry of your arms and legs
spread out making an eternal circle together
creating a golden pillar beside the Atlantic
the faint line of hair dividing your torso
gives my mind rest and emotions their release
into the infinite air where since once we are
together we always will be in this life come what may

— from "When I am feeling depressed and sullen" by Frank O'Hara


Do you think of me
as often
as I think
of you?

— "Please" by Richard Brautigan



*



They say
milestones are
just numbers, and
for once I actually believe it.
Definite dates no longer matter as much as
moments that evidenced feelings -- feelings of certainty defeating feelings of apprehension.
When did it actually begin? is no longer a question that needs to be asked, just as Does it 
matter, as long as it will never end? is an answer that needs no further emphasis. I think
the idea of being ready again revealed itself more than a year ago, that night you sliced
my steak and I let chemistry point its knives at my heart again. Maybe even before;
maybe it was that day you handed me the jar of deep purple, or that day I first
rode your car and it was raining. But in the calendar inside my chest, it does
not matter what day it was. What rings truer is that it's become clear how
much it just made sense then, how it still makes sense, and how sure I
am that it will continue to do so, for far, far longer than that graffiti
of drumsticks and smoke stamped across your heart ever will.


— Ship, me





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