how long have you been lonely?
is a question I won’t dare to ask.
sometimes I feel the long depths
of that part of you
when sitting over dinner,
the beers getting warm
and heavy with condensation:
it’s in the darkness of your apartment
like the dank, cold surface
of a bear’s cavern.
it’s limitless.
and it’s in the shadows your clutter
casts, too.
it’s in all you’ve collected,
like me and my trinkets
and my thriftstore memories.
for you, it’s in the overstock
of toilet paper and coffee,
the stacks of books that pile
waiting like killers on death row.
…
how long have you lived like this?
it’s a question I won’t dare to ask.
you’re prepared for the worst,
but chanting for the best.
and it’s in the song you wrote
and sung
to ghost town bars
like Hamlet in his famed soliloquy.
and even though you won’t play it for me,
I know the chorus
because I sung it for so long, too.
…
it goes something like this:
replacing the fish in the bowl
when he shrivels
saying goodbye with a shoulder shrug,
purchasing another
at the same pet store
in the same punctured jar
with the same sad identical eyes
and flimsy fins
that couldn’t keep him afloat in the wild.
or hosting the three little pigs
in your filthy living space
and in your grinding head
and clicking fingers,
insisting that the fairy tale scribes
got their stories mixed up
and you could go to the carbon copies
and hack them,
waiting for Goldilocks
to come barging in.
…
did you expect it to happen this way?
it’s the question I won’t ever ask.
it’s why we don’t talk about
when we haven’t showered for days,
and we rinse ourselves with the wind
or another harsh, curse-laden licking,
so we can keep going,
humbled that we’re not pristine.
it’s why all the poems in our archives
are about imaginary men and women,
with real flaws and fake irises
and skin that was every color
of the spectrum, alien-like
and impossible.
…
but if I were to ask
a question I dare not ask,
you’d say you were a virgin
when you met me
and I’d rebut with the fable
of my reincarnation,
how once I hated how the world
looked, how proud and blue
it was from the sky’s view
then I came down
and sprouted from the landfill
and no one cared how I grew,
but admired how my petals fluttered
and simply knew that I’d clean up nice
and look good perched on a sunny windowsill,
decoration for a kitchen sink shared by lovers.
naomi barde: 