I’m not trying to break your heart/ I’m just trying not to fall apart

 

Classes started and I already feel overwhelmed. The end is in sight and I don’t think I’ve ever been more afraid of failure.

I’ve been thinking about desire. What do I want? How do I want? I’m thinking delayed gratification can be a sublime experience. Allowing temptation to pass me by…is not usually how I operate. I’m not governed entirely by impulse or pleasure, but I’m quick to give in to what I want. Maybe too quick to give in to what I think others want when those desires more or less line up. Someone tried to get me to go home with them (amazing how often I seem to be writing that lately), and I declined. “Don’t you want to get to know me? Don’t you want to be my friend?”, I coyly asked. The answer got lost somewhere between his hand down my shirt, the other up my skirt. What can I say? Baby steps.

So maybe I take that desire, the desire I have for someone I really, really shouldn’t and the desire I have for someone passing my way and I sublimate it into something else. Love letters, poetry, hours of pacing around the city, hours of running my hands over brick, iron, concrete. This is how I remind myself I am alive. I let the city rub up against me instead of strangers?

 

My erotic body double

Wants to fuck yours

Head straight for the Pacific

Without stopping

Hold hands

Cross the Brooklyn Bridge

Keep walking

Wake up in the same boro

Everyday for a week

Feed each other oranges

At 2am

Leave the bourbon

The Johnnie Walker

Behind

 

My erotic body double

Wants to run her hands

Over your arm for an hour

Lick the salt of the

Sea

Off your shoulder

Run her hands

Through your hair

Break your glasses

And make a mess of all

Your fine, fake plans

 

My erotic body double

wants to get in the car

And go

Sit next to you forever

Reach the West in silence

Gaze at the ocean

Know we’ve

‘run out of continent’

But we’ll never outrun

Whatever lies,

aching,

between us

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