dusk, suspended

in comes the new year,
i enter it slowly,
thick glass between me and you

and i wonder if i should have faced you for it,
left the window open,
                    all this silence from me,

hot water in the nighttime the steam through
our noses and out of our ears,
voices mute down the hall footsteps disappearing
from the ceiling,

you burn your despair in my candle and let
it drop in the rain, a flame, a leaf against
the concrete,

our hooded somnolence crawling back
up the stairs,
            it is our best attempt at death.

The cats are grey,
grey leaks into me,
your house is waterlogged,
all those pretend lives drowning,
who knows how to stave off a dream?,
the dark leans in,
snowy PA landscape,
if you're hurt I'll leak into you,
refineries and cornfields and cows,
winter sun emptying out my eyes,
the cave I can't climb out of,
shiny object landscape,
pedal and finger noises,
if you have a love leak it out,
wait until the end of the song,
an auger for an ice pond,
curious love let it stick.

The weeks pass by,
hand to night, foot to morning,
rolling through tall grass,
catching sight of stars;

cloudy night of silence,
no reply, walking through mist,
lugging along my body,
mouth to speak, mind to wither,

            my life an open wound.

Meager fuel,
            I’ve learned
            love falls upon people
                            undeserved,
as I replenish endlessly, K says
this must mean I love you;

kurosawa blizzards,
drips of blood on melting snow;

I can’t turn back; you are waiting at the bottom;
                my mountain to yours.

Soft white feathery forgiveness
descends and slowly covers me,
                a sort of coffin.

When it spills out I play at being a saint.

Morning has unfolded: the bed is warm
from my own body,

—strange,

I like quiet before I leave,
big ceremonial movements.

I don't want to be the wise one,

but
each day I wake up and worry about
the same thing—

"the prolonged agony that eventually
ends"—so,

turn it into granules of sand,
and then a beach, ragged underfoot
(new york),
then into the ocean,

then back to shore. So,

my clothes won't dry for days,
seawater will stick to my skin,
but the calm will bleed into night.

This fragment of my life sits squat, just
as you don't budge with your back turned to
me, just as I rub my eyes refusing to move, as
my sore head spins freely along three axes,
as the fear-shaped thing inside me doesn't
dislodge.

A walk through the park:
I am surrounded by birds, leaping squirrels,
the quiet of midday, the start of november,
the promise of pain.

At last I am understanding this sonata of
suffering, this path I have been stumbling on:
it comes to me piece-meal, slowly, slowly, and
with each morsel I trade in a bite of my flesh
for a swing at that black hold, asphyxiation.

My life hangs midair, each time I wake
you are in a different contorted position,
spotlit.
We fly through the night;
it is over, over
too soon.

Then
low clouds kissing hills over germany,
irene with sunrise

(tributary wisps like a river,

our inflexibilities,
the cause of freedom is not the cause which
causes the body;

now
with a still sea of sky below us,
jet lines criss-crossing,
our knees no longer touching,
I find I am moving into grief),

and
the realization that I am suspended over an ocean,
a substance so deep and so cold,
so harmful to enter
and so harmful to exit.

We suffer together, trek out to the beach at night, stay up for K's heartbreak, dream of warm broth and car-rides home, of empty calendars, of being taken care of. The next day my mom comes and cleans the microwave, I sit squished between my parents as the sun retreats behind a building, sharing details of my life as I move further and further away. After they depart I'm left to shiver alone in my stale, barren world.

We communicate haphazardly, but it feels like forgiveness, my throat raw from the coughing and the laughing and the joint and the onion rings and the sleeping late.

Between vacuuming and crying, I implore you to sleep so I can rest.

love,
suzanne

2022