from guillermo, with love
sometimes anger must act as the catalyst of change.
in me, there is a young boy who
is infuriated by the locked door.
(the door was never locked in the first place,
but if i dared leave the room while still
making noise, i would be shuffled back in
until i was done: weeping, yelling, or being
a general inconvenience. this is a generational
thing my mom learned from her mom from hers. some might even say this practice is cultural.)
where does anger go if not through the mouth:
jaw set alight, biting teeth, whiplash tongue?
that red hot travel from my hands never saw release. the door stayed closed.
it was a horror show for sure. burning, wordless,
forgetting it was all happening
to me, not because of me.
when conditions are so bad, the throat crushes in on itself.
it’s simply unable to stand against
the vacuum of the heart.
so there i was with the locked door. a year of silence each time it clicked in the frame.
you forget these things until it’s most inconvenient to unearth them.
when we collided, i kaleidoscoped, i re-formed
into something a little stranger but
more intimately human than ever before.
we still collide, you burn up, and no one ashes into anything unless i want you to.
i rarely do. i am too busy under the stairs
dusting our things.
i have myself to get over first, i have
a mile wide radius to run from
before i can. and you are centuries off.
you have a calendar of marks to forget.
not to mention the wine glasses, oak coffins,
whatever fresh hell is in the closet,
whatever bodies i’ve buried in the garden.
the execution of love is something
you and i only get right in my dreams.
here i am, midnight, silently gazing at you
under a chandelier, it’s grim,
and it’s red hot need you to give life
to my need
stronger than blood memory
i think about the houses i’ve been,
the parts of myself that i’ve given spaces to live,
how they come alive
when i leave this world and
enter that celestial realm.
all the lights like stars,
all the ceilings like spirit,
all the walls like gravity on my body.
here, the wood keeps me awake
here, my neck still aching
rolls onto
you: my orbit.
