jayivan

the heat crept in—
dreamstealing
through windows sealed tight

Point makes a prison
Out of what could be freedom:
The fear is killing.

We crawled inside love,
as if (it wasn’t) a shelter.

I wrote this while holding you in bed, the air conditioner running too cold and your body running hot beneath the comforter. I wanted my arms to wrap around you and hold you from all harm. To protect you and make you feel safe. You sighed heavy and shifted closer to me. And for a moment we were safe. It was not illusion. Instinct more likely. Something inherent. Hereditary. Prehuman. To make us blind to the fact we are never safe. Even in each others arms. Our bodies are our sustenance yet they work against us. Others bodies: interactions and entanglements out of ours, anyone’s control. The earth, sustaining us yet trembling beneath us. And space, cold space, burning hot space: order and chaos into infinity.

So I held you, and felt your warm breath against me, and let my head spin free in thought. With you. Just then. Forever in a moment. Like a flame forgetting it is a flame, a sun forgetting it too is a thing with a lifetime.

I didn’t mean to,
to break your heart, and all that,
with unread poems.

so, this is today,
a hollow in a body
that ever empties—

a pain like white noise
behind my eyes resonates
on low frequencies

can’t stop the snarling,
resentful glares, at passerbies
unaware

you walk at my side
to the station, warming up
cold hearts peering in.

old man near the sea
along the estuary green
shirtless and carefree

i am short-tempered
with poems, hasty to leave,
before they empty

like parks in the rain,
whatever substance was there
scatters for cover