Memory comes up short.

The days lag behind me.

I cannot tell you what it is 

that I want. You won't

understand. Until you do.

For me there have always

been the yes places

I know them before I

get there

I am always on the

slowest train to yes.

I know the yes places

will receive me as

well as I have mapped

them in my heart.

They always do.

There are, of course,

others. How the thread

unwinds, tangles.

When I leave something

behind in a yes place—

a gold ring, a book,

a lover, say—

the yes places never mind.

They fold my lost things,

over and over, until they

disappear, until their shapes

no longer appear on

my heart's map and

I can trace each skyline

as I please.

It's wise to pack light,

the yes places say.

The dark will find you,

wherever you roam.

Latch the suitcase.

No need to bring

anything from home.

Love—

let's name it—

is not for me what it is for you.

Love, my love,

is something altogether linear—

or would be

if only I hadn't tangled the wire

if only I hadn't strung myself up

if only I hadn't strung you out

if only I hadn't hung the Polaroid of you

on the wall, and then from the moon.

My love, love, 

is Point A and Point B—

I cannot coil the useless love I have for you

into the circle that would knit

Point A (me) and Point B (you)

into kiss, kiss, reprise, finale.

Once, an endless number of days ago

two lovers lay in Washington Heights

atop Ikea sheets drenched in lilacs atop 

a bed atop a parquet floor 

(desirable, insisted the realtor).

One lover said to the other:

What if I love you more than you love me?

One lover did not say this. One lover

said nothing at all. Perhaps there was

a smile as fleeting as the soiled August

breeze leaving its sooty prints on our sill.

Do you remember who you were,

which lover?

Do you remember any of it?

Now, I am the din outside that once-window,

I am buses and cars and schoolchildren and

bodegas and basketballs and babies.

In other words, my love,

I am just out there, of no particular consequence

to you, just the noise of your periphery.

And everyone knows

you cannot see noise.

Speak to me, first, of absinthe

and pork belly. Your calloused

hands say I have done most things

and you, woman, will be next. 

Lean in. Tell me a secret I have

never been told. Linger by my ear,

finger a lock of my hair with your

usual carelessness take me or leave

me you could go either way 

You will never be mine but

only children count people.

Yes, I would rather sleep alone than fight


and this is why I sleep alone. A drunk?


Not too late, my first last career. I write,


suits the job. Alone, I am a word sea


dotted with empty bottles. As for sex,


I vaguely recall. I liked it with you. Love—

damn that beast! No prerequisite for love.


It needs nothing, not even us. Why fight


when I could sleep on it, on you, have sex


in a dream with a belligerent drunk,


then wake to your gentle coffee? Your sea


is still my sea, though “you’re right,” I won’t write.

I am saying, dear, who gives a text? Write


what you want, or don’t write at all. I love


our love for its constance despite us, sea


change after spare change. I don’t have the fight


that you need to keep you in check, no drunk


fists, battle scars. I choose sleep over sex. 

No, our tongues will never touch again. Sex,


I would trade for one sentence from you. Write


of love that’s sailed with no plan for port. Drunk


on wine or waiting, I remain your love,


still mute, still dumb. No hope, no cash, no fight.


I remain your love across idiot seas.

Poets write this way and so do drunks. Sea!


Grief! Lost shoes! The Titian mound of her sex!


Laugh with me. I have given up the fight.


This sweaty, besotted poet who writes


limericks ’round wounds? She bleats of you, love.


Yes, you have rankled this poet, this drunk, 

so she will no more speak of what was. Drunk


on my bitter horsetail brew. Allons-y,


and see what I mean? What lasts: only love.


No sail or oars, she’ll stay afloat. But sex


we have some say in, still. Don’t you dare write


of her, on my side of the bed. I’ll fight

only then, bar fight in my brain. I’m drunk


on waiting for you to write. Heart at sea,


no due course. Sex, we have some say. Not love.

This silence would be deafening

if you could hear it, still.

It broke you years ago, when

you were seized with a fit

of wanting needing so violent

you dug your way out through

your own skin to escape the

stunning cruelty of the

everpause between the

asking and never receiving.

You bled yourself in

payment for what did not,

would not come.

You did not think to ask

for a receipt.

Maybe this silence was

always deaf to you too.

Imagine that:

a deaf silence.

The world becomes something

altogether kinder, if we know

nothing exists that can hear

some of us, and not others.

There are those who swear

they hear, and are heard.

They insist that this silence

excavates their fossilized prayers—

readily willingly mercifully

just in the nick of this time

and that time too—

from somewhere inside the black

crevasse of palms touching.

You have stopped (almost)

longing to be one of them.

You are alone.

You put yourself to bed

at night and listen to your

own prayers as they

whimper, then settle,

in the dark.

You are the only one

who can hear the four-letter

words howling fire

and spitting bile

and leapfrogging

in your belly.

You are not mute (yet)

but you know better (now)

than to ask this silence

just one more time

about the unanswerables

the unmentionables

the unhaveables

the unavailables

the unassailables.

You are nothing much to everyone in particular.

You are no one's one.

You are especially nothing to a few.

You are everything to two for as long as

it will be until you are not.

Yes, this silence

would be deafening

if you could hear it,

still.