Touching Each Other’s Surfaces
Carol Jane Bangs

Skin meeting skin, we want to think
we know each other scientifically;
we want to believe
it is objective knowledge
gives this conviction of intimacy,
makes us say it feels so right.
That mole below your shoulder blade,
the soft hair over my thighs—
we examine our bodies with the precision
known only to lovers or surgeons,
all those whose profession is explication,
who have to believe their own words.
And yet, having memorized each turning,
each place where bone strains or bends,
each hollow, each hair, each failure of form,
we still encounter that stubborn wall,
that barrier which hides an infinite vastness
the most sincere gesture can’t find.

Nor does emotion take us further
than the shared heat of our bodies
aware of themselves,
the flattery of multiple desires.
We rest in each other’s arms unexplained
by these currents of feeling rushing past
like ripples over a pool of water
whose substance never changes,
reflecting each wave, each ribboned crossing,
without being really moved.
We search each other’s eyes so long
beyond our own reflections,
finding only the black centers,
the immeasurable interior we’ll
never reach with candle,
never plumb with love.

Perhaps it is just this ignorance,
this absence of certainty, lack of clear view,
more than anything, brings us together,
draws us into and through each other
to the unknown inside us all,
that gray space from which
what we know of ourselves
emerges briefly, casts a transient
shadow across the earth
and learns to believe in itself just enough
to believe in some one else.

Valentine
Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.

It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

and when everything is gone it will still cling to your life.

i tried the chinese calligraphy pens in muji and i went through each test pad looking for things that were written from a time that seems so long ago. i wondered how frequently the staff bothered changing the test pads, because the words from back then weren’t there anymore. it’s difficult to believe that so much time has already gone by.

all these gaps left in my life; i try not to think about them much but i keep on feeling the emptiness between each finger.

there is no more sadness; the pain is no longer acute. but every now and then there is the dull ache, wondering about what-if’s and reminiscing about times that seem better perhaps only in retrospect. they say you don’t regret the things you do, only the things you didn’t. i sure as hell tried my hardest, but i need to accept that doing all you can doesn’t mean life turns out how you want it. sometimes it isn’t enough.

i wonder how, if ever, i’ll be able to fill this emptiness that is both spatial and temporal – it has a very specific shape, and my life has now been partitioned into what was before and what came after.

Kate Clanchy, again – because i’m indulging myself tonight:

Double Take
Kate Clanchy

I imagined that you’d miss me, thought
you’d pace your hardwood floor in odd
worn socks, watch the clock sit stuck,

get late to work, type my name caps lock
press and hold shift/break, miss buses, meals
or sit with fork half-way, lost, for minutes,
hours, sleep badly, late, dream chases, shake
send fingers out to pad the pillow, find
my hollow, start awake, roll over, hug a gap,

an ache, take a walk, damp dawn, of course,
wrapped in a mac with the collar up, glimpse
a slice of face, tap a stranger’s back, draw a blank;

as I have. Each time, I run to press your face
to mine, mine, shining with imagined rain.

nine weeks. still dreading and stressed out about patient treatment, worried about messing up or providing inadequate care. sometimes i want to tell myself that what i do doesn’t really matter but that’s just pretty sad, isn’t it?

still can’t see where i’ll be in the future, though i do want to simply fast-forward out of all this and be done with everything here.

this is my fifth attempt at an entry and it’s still half-assed because i don’t want people stumbling upon it and reading things they don’t have a right to. sometimes i really hate social media.

it could have been anyone else. why did it have to be me? it isn’t fair.

We buried our love in the wintry grave
A lump in the snow was all that remained
But we stayed by its side, as the days turned to weeks
And the ice kept getting thinner with every word that we’d speak

When the spring arrived, we were taken by surprise
When the flows under our feet bled into the sea
And nothing was left for you and me

We’re not the same dear and it seems to me
There’s nowhere we can go with nothing underneath
Then it saddens me to say what we both knew was true
That the ice was getting thinner under me and you

The ice was getting thinner under me and you

i didn’t want it to turn out this way i didn’t i never did i can’t i want to take it all back