fuck.. what the fuck, he's

not going to be

just walking around like

that. I mean,

I was hoping he might be

taking an eleven-at-night walk—maybe

it’s something he does—

and he’d find me here. He’d take off

his headphones, the giant

ones he brings

to the practice rooms,

and he would sit here next to me

and talk—(God I like his voice.) This is

an autumn

dream, but

sometimes I believe in

it anyway—it’s the quiet

brightness, I was

feeling full

of quiet brightness—after

looking up earlier from

the Eighth Street station stairs to

find the sky. I found

it, muted with the sun so far down,

and everything else somehow

some deep dark pinkish.

I bought my diet

soda from the cart

beside the physics building, two streets

down. And I walked:

West Fourth with the city dim

and pink and autumn,

with cold in my hands

and with sheet music, and

a sweater and my scarf

hanging from my arm. This—

all of this!—and three hours

in an acoustic

closet with a piano

made me sense

that something

beautiful, like his

voice, would be

around to talk with me, with only

me, but.. I’m in an

autumn dream, right on time. Here

sitting by Washington Square East as

if he’d really walk by. Sort of

actually waiting for him. That’s how

a season like autumn fills

me up: I think of

that someone and I.

In his most

beauteous fucking

chicken scratch, he’d swirl

onto paper

all the brightness that

I wouldn’t know how to speak,

otherwise left

quiet because how

it goes is I open my mouth

and nothing comes

out

really well because I’m

an idiot but

that someone, though:

he’ll spin

me stories truer than this

world ever spun

and arrange tales so tall they

go on and on and grow on me

and outgrow truth to

the point that they

disturb the fabric

that covers up

the sincerity of space

and time! With his creation,

he’d be all himself—that’s what

I’m after: alright with all

his own

awkward, enough

within to walk without

pretending, because God

knows I’ve had enough

of that: by now, I mean,

I’ve spent every

minute of my formative years

pretending, too afraid

that I’d have

no fingers up when

I counted the people

who'd still be

there if I

told.

I

wanna say I

don’t give a

fuck what people think

anymore, but. I need them

to understand, because of

fucking course it’s not

enough

for me to get some

text like this:

Hey man I hope you didn’t get hurt by

anything I said before I wasn’t judging or

anything just sharing my opinion. But

thanks for hanging out with me today it

was awesome seeing you and I love you

dude. Night bro

12:19amTue, June 7

after failing

to explain in twenty

minutes what people will spend

their whole lives

misunderstanding. When even I’m still

trying to piece it all together, how

the fuck would I have

been able to explain what

gender meant anyway … I’m

so..

exhausted

and angry,

but I'm

still pretending.

But that someone.

We’ll wear each other

down until we get

at who we really are, and we’ll be

ourselves finally

—with each other.

Then at that

point, we’d be

too sensitive for anyone else.

That’s us,

too delicate

to stand

anything other than our

selves and each other,

vibrating apart at the sound

of the world. At the end

of it all,

when we’re

no longer

standing, Mother Earth can

mix our selves

together and hand build

another. On her pottery wheel that spins on

her spinning earth, she’ll fashion

the face of someone who would be

both of us in one. And maybe sometime

he and I could receive the world at the frame

and put into words how from our vacuum

we make our love make sense. Maybe,

sometime, there’d be words to grasp

so there’d be no knob to grapple with,

because I’d much rather burn than be

kept six feet into the wall. We’d

make a hell of a ride down from

five-foot-five to earth—

here, Mother: my ashes, my carbon,

from our unfamiliar oxygen.

We’re together

in life and after

life. Yeah … that someone and I.

That someone and I,

on a couch or

something. In the evening—

no. Late into the night,

like two in the morning,

and dim yellow light.

I’d press

our sides together and press

the side of my face against him.

With my lips just motionless

there, half-kissing his shoulder through

his shirt, I’d breathe

in his color.

The purple, it reaches

out from his shirt and

kisses my nose.

My nose:

it tastes the purple and says to me,

“The purpliness is a place I want to be,

take me there all the time!”

I take deeper breaths—always

with my nose—

slower

and

slower breaths,

trying to inhale him,

in

all

his

smell, unhurried.

My lungs go crazy,

confused about what

to do.

My lungs, they like him:

they balloon

with his sense

of humor

and start up

and end up squeezing themselves,

emptying themselves and

emptying themselves.

Caught in

this quiet carnival of a boy,

my lungs seem to forget

the airlessness

and think for

now they can get

by, just with his purple.

And he kisses me—the purple!

so close and mine.

My blood cells call for more,

for more!—they can

taste the difference between any

ordinary air, and

all that

purple verve that floods

my lungs, the purple that comes

in quickly

and interrupts the

sweeps and

stretches of laughter-exhales.

My lungs, they’re so in

like with him:

they take him

in and they’re

into him.

And there: that

someone and I, we’re caught in

a someplace sideways-raised

from storagestuff,

a someplace brought up

by us in a way that everyplace is autumn.

I’d feel his

words rumbling at

his shoulder:

It’s just you

and me tomorrow?

We’ll take the

express train to the end

of the universe. And run

side by side with

the speed of light. Or we’ll go

to your dreams, if

reality won’t bring me to you.

He’d shrug against my face—he

knows how cheesy he’s

sounding:

We’ll even go nowhere.

Because nothing

means damn everything when

your hand is in mine. Sorry

for the cheesy

especially because you’re

vegan now.

That’s my

kind of

quiet brightness.

I’d think about

all of

him and about

how the Earth beneath my shoes takes

me as it turns. We’re pretty

lucky he happens

to be

here on

this infinites-

imal dot. Who

would’ve thought that

the purple would be

here on such a small dot!

He's part of the purple in

the majesty of the universe.

I would think about how mountains

and mystery made people

believe in beauty, in

destiny, in everything. But, just

he and I are

enough to convince me.

This someone and I hidden away,

upon his couch in our sense

of alone and

togetherness, would make me

think—about

how much the world is missing

out on us. The idea

puffs up within my

self. And POOF! everything disappears.

I’d nod against him:

right. Right.

Tomorrow, it’s

you and me.

Like Mr. and Mr. Wright,

we’d fly above

all this

crimson. And we’d be

Mr. and

Mr. Right if

that’s alright

with him.

Right.

Tomorrow, it’s you and me.