Machinations Of A Daybed
Trading ideas like baseball cards. I said we could clean them up and paint the sides that show. I was horizontal, staring straight into your vertical height. Is three feet enough? Or would you rather have two? Practicing your abstract algebra, I practice my newfound patience. A temperament, a condition I never thought I’d find. I am hopping from moment to moment like a frog finding lily pads. It’s a Sunday night on your makeshift daybed; it’s a Sunday night at home. Immature in April, growing up in May, I feel better than I’ve felt in days. Slipping notes, scribing love letters on old index cards, your pencils, your apartment. Our list is long. All we need is time. The kitchen sings in sounds that smell; the sun crashes against the western-faced windows. I think I’d like to take you to a rodeo.
I watch you in the wild. I watch you cut out a space in this world so perfectly shaped. You might be the brightest color I see in a field of flowers. I would pull all the stars down for you and collect every bloom if it meant making you smile.
He’s got vertigo; his equilibrium is all off. The man might just turn red with all that love bustling inside his chest. He can’t concentrate; he can’t keep track of the past or the present. He writes everything down so not to forget a single moment with her. His hands go wet, his knees go weak, and his mind goes blank. He can’t play the guitar but he’s so dang confident that he might just pick one up and tune it to her heart finding the perfect pitch.
I hammer the nails, peaking out just above the surface so not to catch our socks as we strut around the floor. Cooking sole in your underwear, my soul bends in flux. Shooting finger guns at ghosts, drinking wine from oversized glasses. A mandolin plays consistently in my head, and I can feel the reverb in my toes. I thought about a lifetime of ramblin’. I thought about a lifetime of singularity. Now I think about the morning sun peaking in through the soft shimmer of sheer curtains; I think about the suspension of time in blue hour when you lay soundly next to me. No more nights I watch turn to day, no more chattered teeth and a worn-out liver.
We smoke weed from the fourth-floor window; I feel you melt into me like an ice cube in boiling water. When we part, my stomach aches, and the world takes on a shade so drab and washed out it is only enlivened by our next meeting.
He’s on the mend, our boy licks wounds made of bramble and bad decisions. His compass used to be smashed, broken glass obstructed the needle. The world is a big place, he’d seen only parts of it. With her, he thought that he’d like to see all of it, every single corner of the place that used to intimidate him, that used to force so much ambiguity like throwing a dart at a map, letting chance guide the way.
No more of that, no more wandering, he thought, as now was the time to become something else. The garb of a dirty dog no longer fits him like it used to. The suits tailored to his unique form of self-sabotage no longer have room in the shoulders, and the chest is getting tight. He felt made for her, he felt like life’s long division finally left him no remainder.
Cover Art: Siesta - Bridgman
