3am

My phone rings at three o’clock in the morning
And I half awaken from the sleep it took me so long to achieve
Fumbling in the dark for the small cell phone that vibrates incessantly on my nightstand
Refusing to stop until it is answered.
I brace myself for the worst,
Expecting the caller to bear news of a death, breakup or freak accident on I-95,
Images of flashing lights racing through my mind,
But instead am greeted by the sound of you.
You,
Who bears no understanding of time zones
Or sleep cycles
Or courtesy.
You ask me innocently if I had been sleeping,
As if you had expected me to be doing something else in the early morning hours of a Tuesday,
And although I am lying in bed, eyes closed, in a comforter cocoon,
I reply “No,”.
I am desperate for your voice
And hearing it makes me forget that I have work in 6 hours
And have not had a decent nights sleep in over a week.
I would listen to you breathe if it meant that I was able to listen at all.
We talk about nothing,
And although I silently wish we would broach a topic of importance,
Like what is going on between us,
I am grateful for every line of bullshit we utter if only because it means we have not yet said goodbye.
My heart, however, still weighs heavy on the tip of my tongue
And every time we talk about the weather
It threatens to springboard into the receiver and into your ears
So that maybe you would finally know how I really feel.
“Yes, it did rain today”

drink up

Drink up.
We’ll blame it on the booze that we abuse even though we understand that these emotions don’t originate with our fourth Jack Daniels.
We’ll blame it on Tennessee and the whiskey but we’ll never blame it on you and me.
Because there is no you and me
And there’s no where to be but tipsy because tipsy leads us down the roads we’re too scared to travel sober.
Tipsy leads me to your bed, where I’m lying, your chest pressed against my head, and I’m wondering if the warmth I’m feeling is because of that last Southern Comfort or because I haven’t felt this comfortable in a long, long time.
We’ll drink up because we refuse to acknowledge what is going down.
And I’ll guzzle it down so that I can say I love you and blame it on my inebriation
As opposed to my intoxication on your smell, your lips, your words.
All the words we utter, simple and sweet and filed away in a metal rolodex for later sadism, will be denied in the morning.
Denial is bliss and I’ll deny anything just to keep you here with me a few minutes more.
But eventually the booze will wear off
And the morning will come
And all that will remain will be empty bottles
Strewn across hardwood floors
Carelessly and recklessly
Like the words we utter to each other when we are convinced that the other is too drunk to remember.

graze

It was your hand on my leg
Gently grazing against my knee
Uncertain but still forceful
That propelled my head to lean against your back
And my chest to push a little further into you.
I wanted to wrap my arms around you
An unspoken declaration of the affection I so desperately sought
But thought better of it and instead watched you take long drags of your cigarette
And exhale the heavy smoke into the chill night air.
You had limited yourself to two cigarettes a night
I had limited myself to you.
We didn’t speak,
Instead we swayed as one
Along to the sounds that poured from the boombox perched on the windowsill
The indie alternative folk permeating our souls mixing with the sounds of the world outside.
There were drunken screams and rock music and car horns but we heard nothing except the lead singer’s soft painful laments
And our breathing that had grown fast and labored with anticipation.
You moved, adjusting yourself on my lap, and I moved with you
Meeting you moment by moment
So that you would finally understand that you were not alone
And we were meant to meld into one.
The morning came easy that night
The sun mixing with the darkness
Creating a sky of purples and pinks and blues
Its pale yellow rays
Peaking over the hilltops in the distance
Still covered with snow, remnants of late season storms.
It found us together
Under blankets of wool and layers of deceit
Pressed close together under the guise of warmth
It had been cold that night
But with you pressed against my back I felt nothing
Just the electricity generated every time you grazed against me.

new

It wasn’t that first kiss 5 minutes past midnight in a bar off the Seine where we both realized that we were the only single ones in the room.

It wasn’t that last bottle of champagne that we drank as you walked me back to the apartment I was subletting for the winter, on the outskirts of the city, because the metro lines had stopped running hours before.

And it wasn’t because the key wouldn’t work in the door and you stayed to help me break in and didn’t laugh when the door burst open and I tumbled in, falling face first onto the bare dusty floor, taking a lamp with me, breaking the only light source in the room.

And I swear I wasn’t drunk, not when I invited you to stay and not when we made love on the cold hardwood, the outline of the Eiffel Tower barely visible over the row of early century houses that provided the only real view and certainly not when I whispered I love you and watched as our breathes, heavy, escaped as mist, mixing together to become fog that hung above us. And it wasn’t because I expected to hear it back or that I was lonely or because it was the only phrase in French I could say beyond “Where’s the bathroom”. It was because I knew, I just knew, as we lied there wrapped only in January air. I knew. New.

my blog

i had originally intended to use this blog to post my adventures abroad. six months later and it still remains without a post. so i'm revamping it and have decided to post my poetry, prose and whatever else happens to pop into my head. we'll see how it goes. enjoy.
~s