warning: this is really emotional, filled with cliches, unedited.
it's 4 o clock in the morning in Minnesota and
my phone is suddenly ringing and though
I have a slumbering canine on my body I reach over hers
to open that electronic device because
it is YOUR name I see.
Max.
I have always enjoyed your name, enjoyed
that one playful syllable and the way
the "x" sound tickles the roof of your mouth
and becomes a smile.
I am so surprised it is you, floored, even,
that your brain in its drunken state would
trace through its pathways, deciding which
person connected to which number connected to
which finger you press--
that I was that destination in your mind.
I hide in the secret parts of your mind
which only come alive once the floodgates have been
knocked down by a flood of alcohol.
I haven't thought of you in weeks, months, even.
other people ask me how you are, if we still talk, and
your name comes as a shock.
"Max?" it takes a few seconds to dust the cobwebs,
to oil the rig so my voice doesn't squeak
(but it still does):
"...Max?"
I have tried for some time
to make your name a foreign language to my ears.
We talk for an hour.
You describe your collegiate woes,
(which is not to belittle them, only to label them accurately)
it sounds as if certain ratios are askew--substance abuse : fulfillment.
We talk about your "friends from home"
as if I am not one of them.
I feel for you Max.
But I also cannot help but feel
an awful twinge in the pit of my belly
as you describe the girl you first had sex with
and how you feel especially connected with her
because she was the first one.
Subtext: it was not me.
Subtext: why the fuck are you calling me Max?
Using me as your diary after
so many of my own entries are filled with your name
alternating between
writing it because I liked the sound of it
and that I could use it so often, with a reason
--and writing it as an explicative, to be cursed.
You sit at your desk feeling strife about
others and your own internal twistings
oddly mirroring where I was exactly
one year ago today,
sitting at my desk
hating you and loving you and my insides
turning themselves inside out for you.
Subtext: I am still wounded from you,
and I am not sure if this is helping me heal or
ripping off a freshly formed scab
It's 5 o clock in the morning and there are
one hundred things I should be doing with my
time instead of talking to you.
But, here I am
and there I was
and there I
might be
later.
I am here, for you,
because I love you
but you should really learn how to read between the lines.
