W.H. Auden, “What mad Nijinsky wrote / About Diaghilev / Is true of the normal heart; For [it]
Craves what it cannot have, / Not universal love / But to be loved alone.”
I already sleep with our eulogized love placed on my bedside
I used to imagine new memories and smile
I smile now half
Wade the rhythm of someone’s heartbeat
Quick,
Quick you lose it, along with parts of yourself you did not know was theirs
Here is what is left of my lungs
Here is what I think your hands must have felt like in mine
Here is where you leave my body long before you have said goodbye
II.
I wanted to write a poem about me today
So, I will soon
Maybe my writing so many past tense poems of you
is my last attempt at trying to bury you into a grave you are not yet ready for.
Still you treat me
as though heartbreak never entered this equation
Still you say things that you meant once
And still is that not a form of self-resurrection?
The voices of everyone except for yours
will keep me company here now
to hear is to heal
is to be here
III.
I put down the shards of angered utterances
turn away
look out
(there is so much more out there anyway to be angry about)
I am instead old man yelling at the t.v. screen
We embrace each other (for just a moment longer) after one of our dances
I do not take
any of it for granted
Do not wait for me.
I pause a little longer, for instance
I hear it—
Can you hear the fear?
Anger dissipates itself yet again into the air
Nijinksy was mad but not right
It is not to be loved, or loved alone,
It is simply the act of being seen
I do not remember how long it’s been since I last felt my hands
It is the t.v. screen, black
It is another sadness I should tend to
We are climbing back into time,
of course
(because I said so)
hugging with hands, unclean
remembering to dance
Pausing, for even a mere instance
longer
I am to wait only on myself.