andrew

it's the name less people know you by, it's a name reserved for the lovers of trivia and those most devoted to you. it's thread that contorts itself into the shape of "trouble" when it falls to the ground. it flies out of the mouths of few people, swims in the eyes of close to none. but it's always been your name. your second, but your name nonetheless.

a year ago i made my mind your home. my version of "you." my puzzle-pieced-up version of you. the only words that came out of your mouth were the only words i could hear you say. your vocabulary grew within months and i never knew everything. you were a quilt: comforting and covering and on top and warm and made out of patches of the small things my eyes have seen of you.

today my eyes are still seeing. new things and old things and things that might have never mattered had you not –

i will never know who you are, mon cher acteur, mon cher amour – or who you were, because that is more grammatically correct, given the situation we found ourselves in, but that has never been the way anything felt when it came to you.

some days you are still the most gorgeous, and still the first, because you were the first, and you were the start of a lot of things – but that place is not yours anymore, my dear. but your place is still your place no matter where it is, and that is in my heart. just like in licorice and sugar and gummy worms and gummy bears. just like in candy.

but my mind is not your home anymore. but you still have my heart. not all of it, but a part of this blood-pumping organ much like my clenched fist is yours.

i've been clenching my fists since you –

Aimes et Adores

But not really.

He's candy canes and snow (sometimes snowstorms) and sunshine. I've always called him sunshine. I've always seen him as sunshine. He's globes and fruits and footballs and bruises and thunder and helicopters. And lotion. He's – everything. Sadly. Thankfully. He's become everything. He became everything somewhere in the animation of flying calendars. Or maybe he was the pilot the flew the dates.

And you are something. You are not everything, you are something, and you are something special. You're not the couch, not the rug, not the walls, the ceilings, the lights. You're a smile, you're a tear, you're the stubble, you're your words, sometimes you're my words.

He isn't a ticked box and you're not crossed out on my checklist. He goes without saying and you are something new. You are something new.

All new things turn old. But I'm praying not you. I can't have two everythings because there's only one universe (despite what you might have experienced) but I don't have to choose. I'd choose him anyway. I'd always choose him.

But, oh, how I do I love you.

The First Person

i. on the the moon

Found falling to be the hardest.

It's hard to slip into this, sometimes, and it's hard to fit into dresses and skin. And into everything in between. Hard to have words spill from mouths and to tip kisses from someone else's lips. Hard to draw what can't be thought about. Hard to hold what isn't concrete and to watch what isn't being shown. Hard to break what is already in pieces.

Hard to fall when anti-gravity doesn't allow it.

ii. playing with mold

Strange when accidents are a part of destiny... or whatever.

Coincidental meetings and perfect-to-disastrous timing. Laughing and then the room suddenly becomes much brighter. Having a good time and then having a baby right after.

And all that stuff. Accidents. Everyone's had them.

It's just weird when coincidences make sense.

Never wanted this to happen.

iii. brighter suns

I want you to understand something.

Bridal veils and wedding cakes are in the future, and doves, and wedding bands and the gleams that reflection gives flight to, and other things, like me and you, and everything – we're going to want everything and more commas. I promise you we're going to want everything.

We're going to name the stars and we're going to dictate the positions of the galaxies. We're going to collect stardust and assemble planets. We're going to do a lot of things, and the things we create will be the shoes we use to stomp on the earth to leave our footprints.

Comets. We'll have comets. Like dogs. Except celestial.

And dictators – we'll be those, we'll dictate everything, because we know how the universe must work, and we will point pistols to foreheads, swear we turned into everything we never wanted to be, and we will shoot our beliefs and our bullets into the brains of the elder who've seen what's been and the youth who've seen what could've been, and then we'll shoot each other –

My hands will be too used to the gun, and I'll be too familiar with the trigger – and you will make me befriend remorse again at your wake.

You'll always be the first person, because you made everything make sense, and first person was no longer me, or I, or we, or us, or anything that included me – because there was you, and you became my first person.

And you'll always be the first.

iv. confession

(I) go insane sometimes.

Chandelier

She spins on the marble. She spins. Like a top.

And her body is sequined and her eyelids are glittered and her hair is golden. She's sort of perfect. She's sort of shiny. Blinding.

And she's still spinning. Like a less graceful ballerina. A scintillating dancer. Like a planet made out of diamonds.

*

Magpies would plunge down from the heavens and break like stepped-on cigarettes at the taste of her skin.

If she can do it to men, she can do it to birds. Everyone's an animal.

*

It's the... whatever she tried this time. She can't remember. Memory isn't a necessity when life is glamorous, because it's all a very, very thrilling routine anyway, and nobody needs to look back on what is always happening.

But this time is a little different, because her body is a little different. Everything is shapes and texture and movement.

And sound. And so much sound – little teaspoon footsteps and secret smearing lipstick.

Who knew that's what stupor sounded like?

*

The room spins the wrong way and she can't tell if she's dancing or walking anymore. Somewhere in another way of life, she might have confused antonyms and euphemisms. She could have also possibly confused what she's confused about anyway for something she's never been sure of to begin with.

Whatever. She's on the ceiling.

She's a little bit bad at direction.

Still pretty lustrous, though.

Very lustrous indeed.

*

Merde!

*

"I witnessed it. Yeah.

"Terrible earthquake, yeah, and I was on solid ground, down here. Those on top had it the hardest.

"Sequins fell in front of me, man, and then glitter and blonde hair after. And then blood came out of them. Yeah – and a couple dead birds fell too.

"That mean anything?"

It will be Wendy.

And then crayons will march up and rule the world and everyone will be a part of a rainbow – and that might be a bad thing, sort of, because there will be more things to be racist about, now. (Everybody knows the Purples can't take the Reds and the Blues – those two have always claimed to be the reason the Purples exist anyway, but not in their history books. And not in their present books, either.)

And then we'll have a hard time finding royalty, because the crowns are going to fit nobody's heads – because all we will think about are the feasts and all we feast upon are the chefs, and the chefs are the patron saints of the religion we will call Life – and we will worship whatever throws us high, be it adrenaline or lollipops or cocaine. (But by then, we will find a way to capture the feeling of being in roller coasters and stick it inside lollipops and we will be sure to keep coke as the surprise center.)

And then rain will fall. Raindrops on the car window will double as stars on the sky beyond the glass. And, tell me, if it rained sunshine, then technically sunshine would have to be liquid – and raindrops would be gold, and they would be solar. And the sun is a star, and will still be a star, and that's what we will make sundrops out to be. (And that makes sense. Doesn't it?)

And then we will have a hard time with logic and belief, because the walls of the world we've built will bleed so blackly that all we will fathom is the darkness we created.

And then, when everybody under streetlights and daylight and everybody who has sauntered deep into the night has woken up, we will all realize how terribly difficult it is to play pretend when we have everything to doubt. And even Peter Pan will grab a gun, shoot all the Lost Boys, and then himself, and Captain Hook will finally feed himself to whatever has always wanted to eat him (besides the chaos of death and damage, of course – however, avoiding these two in the belly of a crocodile is sort of difficult).

And everyone will have a hard time pretending, and actors will run out of roles, and children will grow up overnight (shoot up in height and lessen in rationality, actually), and Neverland will implode on itself, and only one person will doubt all of this enough to pretend it isn't happening.

And it will be Wendy.