~Para el bigotudo en la calle Zorzal~
Today I looked through my Ramblings folder
to find a poem I wrote on how I loved you.
I didn’t find it, which left me upset,
distraught, but still in love.
I looked for it because I liked the way I wrote
how I was staring at you talking about beer,
when I realized I’d fallen in love with you again.
But I couldn’t find it, so I might have deleted it,
maybe after I’d drunk too many beers
while watching you love beer love me.
The last time I wrote poems about loving you,
there were a lot of boxes involved,
boxes with the soul I loved too roughly,
dispensed into little pieces,
like broken glass in shards of dead flowers,
neglected move ticket stubs,
a poem about loving one-month relationships.
I used to keep that poem in my wallet
to remind myself that you loved me.
When I told you, I tried to keep the "old you, old us" in boxes.
You seemed upset, so now I don’t keep you anywhere,
but right in front of me, right on me.
Your sweater draped over my shoulders,
like the buzz draped over my consciousness,
while we got drunk in the middle of Mona Lisa's deck.
I wrote once: that I used to think ours wasn’t a great love story,
but I’m starting to think it’s too big to write into poems or books or songs.
It’s too big to fit into boxes, a shoebox, a moving-away box, a coffin box.
I turn things that scar me in good bad ways into poetry,
so don’t you think it’s appropriate that the most beautiful words are about you,
my Edward Scissorhands?
Your scars are my favorites, even the palest ones;
the old ones, that I would try and hide under red jacket sleeves,
those are the ones that have allowed me to love you again.
I used to be afraid and in love with memories so much
that I would keep them past their expiration dates in boxes that say:
“Let’s pretend this is important”.
But now I think I’m more reminiscent of the future we can have,
the one in your words, at the bottom of our beer glasses,
at the end of another foreign assumption on our future marriage.
Problem.
Every day I write stories in my head about what our living room will look like
and how I might come home late from work and you’ll be there in the kitchen
already uncorking a bottle of wine.
We’ll toast to our alcoholism and I’ll listen to you talk about beer.
I’ll realize I love you, that I loved you,
that I have loved you for what seems like a thousand-and-one boxes,
all piled up around my room until I can only move if I had wings.
When we move away into what will finally be our space,
I will need a-thousand-and-one moving trucks for my thousand-and-one boxes of you,
and you’ll watch from the door, wondering how I’ve managed to "put you, put us" away,
folded neatly so I can keep us close like that red jacket.
I’ll smile in that way that convinces you to let me do anything,
even keep our living room full of boxes, boxes of "old me, old you".
“Let’s pretend this is important”.
Lista de imágenes:
1-3. Web.
