Ah, the kind of memes I looove (thanks,
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wordsthatfail !)
When you see this meme, post a poem on your LJ
The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy
by Jeffrey McDanielReminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice the ring
that’s landed on your finger, a massive insect
of glitter, a chandelier shining at the end of a long tunnel.
Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt under the blanket
of your voice, said I guess there's two kinds of women.
Those you write poems about, and those you don’t.
It’s true. I never slid sonnets under the door, or served you
haiku in bed. My idea of courtship was tapping
Jane's Addiction lyrics in Morse code on your window
at three hundred a.m., whiskey doing push-ups
on my breath. I worked within the confines of my character,
cast as the bad boy in your life, the Magellan
of your dark side. We don't have a past so much as a bunch
of electricity, power never put to good use. What
we had together makes it sound like a virus, as if
we caught one another like a flu, and desire was merely
a symptom that could be treated with soup and lots of sex.
Gliding beside you now, I feel like the Ben Franklin
of monogamy, as if I invented it, but I'm still not immune
to your waterfall scent, haven't developed antibodies
for your smile. I don't know long regret existed
before humans hammered a word on it, or how many
paper towels it would take to wipe up the Pacific Ocean,
or why the light of a candle being blown out
travels faster than the luminescence of one that's freshly lit,
but I do know all our huffing and puffing
into the other's throat--as if the heart was a birthday cake
covered with trick candles--didn't make the silence
any easier to navigate. I'm sorry all the kisses I scribbled
on your neck were written in disappearing ink, sorry
this poem took thirteen years to reach you. Sometimes
I thought of you so hard one of your legs would pop out
of my ear, and when I slept, you'd press your face
against the porthole of my submarine. I wish that just once,
instead of joyriding over flesh, we'd put our hands away
like chocolate to be saved for later, and deciphered
the calligraphy of each other's eyelashes, translated
a paragraph from the volumes of what couldn’t be said.
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