the rule of belief

"keeping your fingers crossed makes it difficult to hold a pen, but i must say, it's worth it." lorrie moore

i was born cursed with a belief in everything.

except for the giddy of new love. i don't trust that, even if at times i believe in it.

a person in love gives too much.

away.

never trust a person who says everything with a smile.

you say my belief is openness you can see in my posture.

you say you can tell it's me before you can see it is me.

coming.

behind closed doors i lose the right way up and find myself clinging to the roof like a fast-food pickle.

my posture belies my belief in the lie down.

my posture belies my belief in the get go.

and the let go.

my best-friend at uni said my curse was to destroy my food with too much salt.

i believed her.

but then she had a boyfriend for three years who lacked a libido. she could count the number of times she had sex during her under-graduate years.

with her boyfriend that is, there were times when she sought "fulfillment" elsewhere.

never become your boyfriend's sister.

even though i believe that, i didn't tell her.

and now my beliefs are under threat.

i hope.

there are times i hope so much it makes me squint like it's sour.

or makes me straddle both sides of everything.

and even though i know all i can know from the life i have chosen, and the one i have been honest enough with myself to have believed down the viewfinder of what was best, or best-fitting, or best meant, i still try and surprise myself - arrive home late and enter via the side gate to see what else i might be doing.

belief is a one-eyed man who will challenge and eventually stare you down.

Mine on My Mind

The book I am writing is on hold.

I love telling you that.

I love telling you the things I would otherwise never share with anyone.

The things you know if you are close to me.

You need to be close to me to know these things.

Sometimes I think these things aloud and you have to be close enough to hear them.

And sometimes these things are whimsical and won't be true as soon as they are spoken. They will not be no longer true because they are spoken, but because there are truer things to follow.

Truth is relative rug or blanket, depending on how desperately cold you are and how you plan to position yourself to sit or to sleep.

I am writing my book again.

I even love telling you that.

Close is too close and can terrify me when I sleep.

Close is not close enough and doesn't hear me breathe between scenes.

Close is you on my mind endlessly and perfectly interrupting me when i

let the decisions decide

i don't know what to say.

i don't much like being interviewed.

words feel remote and impenetrable like pain.

sentences sound overly rehearsed.

i say my own name as though it is something i am only now learning how to pronounce properly.

i am grateful i am not being asked to write it down.

ymlei, milye, elimy.

i feel on the outside of everything, and everything feels on the outside of that.

even the details i usually keep closely guarded on the inside are suddenly a flimsy non-protective sheath i want to shed like a reptile on the run.

like a rodent on the run.

a scared mouse. the blind kind.

see

how

i

run

i hear myself speaking and i feel like i do when i'm walking home at night afraid, watching myself from the outside being afraid to walk home.

i'm enacting a reenactment of the event as it happens.

and as it happens, it happens.

Out of one eye

Tonight I watch the entire movie out of one eye.

My head rests on your chest and I am too comfortable to move for an unimpeded view. When you take a deeper breath your chest blocks half the screen, and for those moments I have only the corner and the soundtrack to go by, and even then the audio is distorted by your sometimes heavier breath and racetrack heart pounding round it's steady course.

Your body is a marvel, and I feel jealous of how perfectly that word fits your curvature.

I want to be this perfect for you.

Your limbs were designed to fit neatly into their tidy joints and to get in the way in precisely THIS way. Fashioned to lie lumpy while lying perfectly flat, so your girlfriend can rest her cheek to your chest as you, propped up on her princess pillows, have the perfect view and aim to kiss her pretty head by.

How could the watching of a movie be more perfect? I am hoping for a double feature.