Cat Ears to Dinner

Love,
Please don’t forget me
Even when is not my name on your tongue, but hers.
There is only one thing I ask of you.
Remember me.
Don’t put your memories of me on the shelf with the dusty tomes when you have finished our story.
Do not so easily abandon me to the recesses of time
To rot in a second hand book shop.
Our story will never be something that can be sold so cheaply.

Please, Love,
Immortalize my name among your stars.
Carve my lettered identity into a constellation that none but us can see
So that I can always look back at this moment
And wonder what we thought.
Write verses of love songs to me in the shower steam until they are imprinted into the stained glass,
Until you can no longer think of anything to write.

Then write them again.

I must confess that I do not believe in
True love.
The idea has been trampled on too many times for it to really exist in my heart anymore.
I know that love is a fickle thing,
That it is likely we will never love each other the same way
And one day leave.
But that is alright.
That is the nature of love.

But, Love,
Please don’t forget me.
Please remember to find my name in the stars every once in awhile
And to let my name fall off your tongue one day as you tell stories to your children.
“Yeah, I dated her in high school. But she was never as pretty as your mother.”
Please don’t just forget me,
Even if our love is a harsh one.
Because I am not simply a book you can hide away
Or a love you can forget. 

Everyone has those nights
The nights where there are no stars
Because all I can see is the ceiling above me at 2:27 AM
(The grandfather clock downstairs is going tick tock)
Where there used to be stars
But I took down those glow-in-the-dark stars a long time ago
Because one day my cool middle school friends would be over and hell if they’d see those cheap plastic things
(Tick tock)
There are no stars on those nights
Only the monotony of a shadowed ceiling
Barely disturbed by the dim brightness of orange street lamps
(2:28)

It’s one of those nights
The nights where I have to blast music at a whisper level just to drown out the screaming of my own thoughts
(Tick tock)
So that maybe I’ll get to sleep by three tonight
Without having to worry about suffocation by pillow
Without tearing the inside of my head apart bit by bit by bit
(2:29)
I shouldn’t have to listen to the voices in my head
The ones that tell me I’m nothing
Their words strung across the room from my ears
Phrases like damp laundry
(Tick tock)
Drying in the air conditioning
Echoes upon echoes of words hanging in the silence

It’s just one of those nights
Bong goes the grandfather clock
(2:30)
And still not asleep

I believe that your soul is a smattering of red, that your heart is dripping love and your arteries are pumping smiles and sighs to your lips instead of blood.
I will watch the tired sighs of red escape your lips with no complaint as you choke down oxygen. I will always be there.
I believe that your soul is crimson, that it burns like a candle, flickering but never fading, and that it won’t ever stop beating down the walls of your rib cage.
Please trace crimson spirals up and down my arms with your touch, with rose fingernails dipping along each cracked surface. Please burn me alive.
I believe that your soul is rust red, that it may just be the smallest bit rusted and broken, but it still works fine.
Hug me while rusted tears freeze on your cheeks and I will save you.
Let me wipe them off with blue fingers, sky blue fingers that dream of making purple.
Blue fingers that know the tip of the sky and the darkest blues of the ocean’s caverns.
Make purple with me, love?
I believe that your soul is red.
Because you are you.
And You are Red

There are just some days
When I would like to forget 
What it means to breathe

I once met a man who could talk to paintings.
He said he could understand their words based on how the sound echoed across the paint.
Different paint?
Different language.
But he said he’d mastered them all.
“You have to be a real artist,”
He would say,
“to know how make a painting breathe.
“You have to give it life.”
He would go to the art gallery in the city every day and wander through the hallways for hours,
Talking to the different paintings.
Every once in a while,
They say he’d take the paintings off the wall and go into town.
He’d laugh at their jokes,
Their little barbs at their makers for not painting them right.
The Mona Lisa always insisted that she hadn’t smiled,
Da Vinci had a mind of his own.
Blue Boy argued that he’d wanted to be red.
The surrealist paintings were especially disgruntled.
“You try being a melting clock!”
Dali’s paintings would yell,
But the man would laugh and walk off.
“I’ll catch you when you’re in a better mood!”
None of the artists had ever listened to the paintings.
That was the key,
Listening to the art.
He said that Mona Lisa loved to smile,
That Blue Boy liked the color blue,
That the surrealist paintings prided themselves in their differences,
But would never admit it.
And every day he went back.
And he visited those paintings for years.

And then he died.

I took it upon myself to paint him,
To paint the paintings he’d spoken with,
His friends.
We were the only ones to come to his funeral.
The paintings and I.
I would listen to the canvas for hours,
Trying to discern what he’d heard.
But the paintings never changed.
Mona Lisa smiled.
Blue Boy was blue.
The Persistence of Memory was still a melting clock.
The artists must have gotten it right after all.

And when I tried to draw him,
There was nothing.
His voice was silent beneath my paint brush.
But perhaps it was because he knew that he would never end up beside his beloved paintings this way.
So I painted something else.

I once knew a man who could talk to paintings.
He said he could understand their words based on how the sound echoed across the paint.
“You have to be a real artist to know how make a painting breathe.
“You have to give it life,”
He would say.
So I guess I was never a real artist because I could never breathe life into him.