Open Heart Surgery

PROLOGUE

It was

Love    

you fell in

-different    

I saw you sleeping 

Next to me

Though you were not 

there      

       awake eyes open 

I saw you next to me 

One day we’ll talk 

about your tattoos 

I’ll listen with my head 

resting in my hands 

one day I swear

I saw you next to me 

I'll be here, If you’re here next

To me 

I’ll be here, I always was 

You 

Know that 

dream I had you 

Naked chest cut 

open everything 

On me 

Everything 

I desire

Everything 

all of you

****

1. SEE

• your mouth
• I liked to look at it, in all of its illuminating glory
• I think it is the most naked part of you

• I see it play out sometimes, we’re on a boat
• My heart has needed surgery since the moment it formed in my mother’s tired womb. 

2. LISTEN 

•  your mouth
• I think I have only heard your breath shake once. It was after we tried to have sex that one time, when I turned into a ghost. 

I trusted you to cut open my bones, reroute my blood. I wanted to have sex with you. You know, I knew I was ready, because you have steady hands, steady lungs. I think I’ve only heard your breath shake once.

• I still trust you, you know? I don’t think I could ever not love you. 
• I remember that one time I got really drunk really fast. I called you in a blind state of mind. I don’t remember what I said, but I remember how you felt– angry– you know it had only been five days and I called you anyway. I meant to say “here is my heart, but it’s fairly intoxicated right now, so please don’t listen to it, here is my heart, thank you for caring” 
• You answered– You’re saying I don’t care
• I should’ve said I’ve only ever heard your breath shake once.

• I remember that one time I texted you 92 times. I don’t think you would hold that against me. I think you would pretend it never happened. I think you would pretend we never happened. I don’t think you can hear those texts in my voice. I’ve only ever seen your face beam once. It was after an idle conversation. I think you just liked the way I sounded. 

3. SMELL

• your mouth               
• I remember that one time you didn’t get onions on your sandwich, even though it would’ve tasted really good. You wanted to kiss me instead, and you did.
• You smell like a perfect bed
• You smell sadly familiar, like a city I could live and die in and never call home. 
• You smell like you
• You smell like my hair, because my hair smelled like you, all the time. 

4. TASTE

• your mouth                
• There are some insects that taste with their hair
• My hair always smelled like you     
• bitter morning-after nostalgia before the moment ever got a chance to age

• You taste like earth, like lavender. 
• You taste instinctive.
• You’re something that I’d like to have in my coffee every morning, if I didn’t need it strong, pure, honest. 
• You’re something that I’d like to have in my coffee every morning, if I didn’t need to be a person, if I didn’t need to be awake. If I could just be a bug, sucking the sweetness out of your softness. You’re too gentle to smirk. I envied that about you. You don’t even know how to grin. I’ve only ever seen your face beam once. You never smiled after we had sex. I think you were afraid you hurt me. Or maybe we’d just been reduced to bodies. But I was never afraid of you. 
• I drank my coffee this morning, no trace of you. But when I bit into my scone my tongue landed on a burnt sun-dried tomato and then I was in your apartment then I was in your bed only for a moment I tasted you again. 

5. FEEL 

• your mouth                 
• I hope one day I feel your mouth on my heart again
• I see it play out sometimes, we’re on a boat, under a Van Gogh night sky, we’re alive, we’re sedated 
• we don’t have bones. Our flesh only exists when we look at it- we like it this way
• because we don’t like to look at it           
• the scars over our chests          
• a tattoo of what had been ripped out of us            

• we like to look at the ocean waves       
• Hokusaki’s Great Wave 
• brutal insatiable it’s mad at us because we’re laughing we’re laughing because it’s funny
• you and I how we’re there though we shouldn’t be 
• we should be
• resting after open heart surgery
• taking it easy      
• alone    
• we shouldn’t be together

• but we are
• wide open barren you part your lips for me and I look in your mouth to see if your breath will shake again but there’s nothing inside your mouth it’s a vacant black hole as if we never existed at all 
• there’s nothing
• more for me to be afraid of
• here 
• I am not afraid of the unknown       
• we are not afraid of impermanence because we are here and it is now           
• both our bodies dance rocking cradled in the hands of the waves so we’re shaking  
• but we’re shaking in sync 
• finally we’re on the same timeline 
• I try to focus on the wind whistling against the weathered edges on our vocal cords

6. BE                                                               

/// but 

• I am
• I am too drunk what’s left of my melted limbs thrown around your shoulders drunk smiling so hard that my face aches drunk I don’t know how to express that 
• I am here and it is now and everything around us hates us everything we know will end but I love you so much that nothing else matters drunk too drunk but this time I don’t say the wrong thing and this time you’re not mad at me this time it all played out like we wanted it to this time 
• I am the most naked part of you