20150206, 2AM

Here I sit, torn and trodden, on my Mom’s day bed that he and I once shared. 

When we were here, just four months ago, it would be so hot that I’d sleep alone on the couch, while he lay, selfish in slumber, amongst my childhood pillows. 

My favorite was a crocheted masterpiece with a playful kitty, 

trying to catch a bee on one side.

And on the other - a red, three-dimensional heart set against a deep blue velvet backdrop. 

These days it’s a lot colder. 

When I got to my Mom’s apartment in Williamsburg, from Los Angeles, I arrived to a neatly folded pile of his shitty boxers and socks that were too beneath him to take elsewhere for safekeeping. 

I want to burn them 

but this is a New York apartment, with no fire escape 

and though it’s the coldest February in years, I put them in a bag to throw out instead.

I catch my mind stuck on the fact that we once laid here, 

on this very twin size mattress, 

happy.

But that too was just a phase,

Like his phase of battle rapping

Or like his phase of talking in that heart-wrenching baby voice 

Or like his “cleansing” phase

Or like his coke “phase”

Or like his phase of Lizz, Elayna, Lou

And now, like his phase of me.

His phase of our days in love

“living in blue, in love with you”

I once thought that I only loved men as a measure of how much I loved myself.

I now know the feeling of being that ambiguous other; 

the feeling of being loved as a calculator, 

a ruler, a measuring tape.

We both used to be the friend, the lover, the better half, so to say.

But people are never who they say they are

And love is never what you think it is.

Unless you think it’s this cold, two-sided pillow

With a pussy on one side

And a heart on the other.

//

I never experienced love like that before - 

the way we stared at each other for hours,

as if the world was ending

or more so like there was no world.

The way we shared everything;

a home, 930 Myrtle

a twin-size bed at my moms

a white leather sectional at A.Chal’s

the world.

We shared the deepest, darkest corners of ourselves

but also the lightest

and also the surface

a lot of surface.

I wonder if he asks himself ‘what did I do to fuck this up?’ 

over and over when he lays down to sleep, like I do

I wonder if he remembers the day, like a death, that he stopped being in love with me

He says he mourns us too but I wonder if it’s the same bone shivering, hair raising, tooth grinding, stomach flipping feeling I get

If not, I wish I could give him this feeling

But no one is right exactly

We both followed our hearts and had no choice but to hurt each other deeply