I want to know who the “You” is. Is it God?
Is it a Band? Is it the person we’re confessing to
in a diary? My professor said second person is
useless but maybe that makes it powerful. I used to think God was
living in the glow-in-the-dark star I had stuck on the ceiling as a child
and whenever I would masturbate I’d
turn away.
Late at night when all the world is sleeping
I stay up and think that everyone I’ve ever loved is the same
whimsical spirit floating from one sad flesh husk to the next.
I will spoon the wall or the wall will spoon me, and all of the spirits,
every sad clown, every animated guitar, every inside joke about an arbitrary
sock will hold me until they fall asleep.
You and me are having sex to a movie.
Or during a movie?
Or at a movie?
In conversation with?
At least we’re in the dark enough
so I don’t have to feel bad about my body.
At least there’s only this light from the actors’ faces,
floating across my skin.
I’m afraid even my orgasms have dimples.
I text you, Dang, I have plans! but what I really mean is
what is better than me
and my imagination? What is more loving
than of all the ways I can invent You
touching me?
Regretfully, the barista who gave me
one-dollar coffees didn’t have a crush on me
but was just “new” and was recently “fired”
because he “didn’t know” how to “use the machine.”
I saw him at the bar last night.
I waved to him. He cocked his head and turned
around.
Today,
I walked into a coffee shop
but no one was there who looked like
they could completely fuck up my life and inspire
a mediocre poem and a half so
I just left.
That was a lie.
All three of those things.
I am a poet for a living, which is not something
I ever thought could happen but alas,
I won the YouTube lottery while it
was still hot and got out before it wasn’t.
I go to colleges and talk about myself
musically. I get fan mail.
I help young girls see themselves.
I guess that makes me happy.
I crave a ferry to San Francisco and a dead phone
full of messages. I’m horny for an empty chair and a street
crawling with the shadows of strangers. It feels good
to have all eyes on me. It feels better to blow
them all away like ladybugs.
I can’t say for sure if I’ve ever had good sex.
I just know that I can enjoy myself and that afterward
there’s a fertile kind of sadness.
I wish all of my friends could have sex
with my lovers so that way we could
compare notes but none of my friends are single.
I guess what I’m saying is I miss my friends.
Why are people in relationships always
taking naps?
I came to New York to get an MFA
but maybe also to fall in love?
Don’t tell anyone that.
New York is cool because you only start
dating someone so that it’s easier to pay the rent.
That being said my roommates are always ending things
and I can always hear them.
Anna says, “I just feel like I’m capable of feeling love
for multiple people.”
Delilah’s like, “But will you always love me the most?”
On and off, on and on, for days and hours. They cry and they scream
and they pull out their hair and then it gets longer.
I want to pull back the curtain that separates my
bedroom and theirs and tell them to Break Up, please.
Just kidding! It isn’t a curtain.
It’s a series of jackets duct taped together.
Just kidding! It’s a collection of Polaroids throughout the years that I’ve strung together with twine.
Also kidding! It’s just a door.
I keep it closed.
I’m watching a couple peck
each other on the cheek at a stoplight.
They’re on bikes. I want to yell
“That’s unsafe!” but that would
probably make it more unsafe.
If you must know, my parents
had a bad divorce when I was twelve.
But before that, they would dance
at the family functions. They would
bachata across the floor, heads together,
hands pressed against necks and backs,
sweating and swaying in this violent
way everyone always said I could sway,
because it’s in my blood.
My sisters and I sat at tables lined with flowers
and plastic sheets and we would hide our faces,
embarrassed because all of the primos and tíos were watching.
And of course my parents knew that.
Then the song would end.
Then the lights would turn on and it was just them
left on the floor of the gymnasium rented out for the night,
surrounded by defeated balloons
and cake that was all crushed
strawberries and earnest whipped cream,
which is, for some reason, the way Latinos love
their cake.
This is how I like to remember it, anyway.
“Dreaming of You” was released posthumously,
which is a word that I used to believe
meant “after you were funny.” If you’re that
pretty can you have a good sense of humor? Come on.
I can’t help but crack
the hell up listening to Selena whisper, “Como te necesito.”
Is that what boys would want me to whisper into their ears? Spanish
songs are all so fucking dramatic. Everything is
a stage, I guess, or the altar we die on.
So, wring your hands at my feet!
Set some candles on my shoulders!
Place those flowers in my eyeballs, baby!
Cry over my wardrobe!
I don’t know. Don’t listen
to me. That won’t make a good song.
How about, toward the end,
when she whispers “I love you,” and answers,
“I love you too”?
It’s like I can see her.
It’s like she’s talking to me.
It’s like she’s alone
in her room, in some apartment in the ceiling.
She’s got her fuzzy slippers on.
She’s got her hair in two tight black trencitas.
There’s a green exfoliant mask settled on her moon-
face. The lights are still on because she’s a girl
who is all at once confident and afraid. She’s holding
up her two hands and she’s pinching them into mouths.
She’s making them kiss.
It’s fair to say that our speaker
is in a hole
and perhaps she doesn’t know
when the hole started
or when she began
her way down
but maybe
her whole life
has been a hole and the future
feels many, many holes away.
Speaking of holes—