Nirvana?

sense is a figment of our imagination.

it is not real, quite like

time.

but that is a case for another story.

i have never made any sense.

i say things and people never

understand.

they talk behind my back,

i know. you told me.

but that’s okay; they just have

a different kind of sense.

a sense that doesn’t

make sense to

my sense which doesn’t

make sense to

their sense, does that

make sense?

sometimes i say things and they

look at me like i’m

crazy.

sometimes they say things and i

look at them like they’re

deranged.

maybe we’re both right-

and wrong-

simultaneously.

but i think your sense and my sense

understand each other.

i think they are best friends,

kindred spirits, not siblings but

lovers.

i think they met long ago

in a library,

obscured from view by a pile of

leather-bound books.

i think mine fell in love with the way

your eyes lit up when you

read sonnets,

i think yours fell in love with the way

my voice sounded when i

whispered them out loud.

met everyday for a week, for a month, but you

stopped coming.

you left and i

didn’t see you again and i

don’t think i ever told you how my heart

ached for you.

i don’t think i was allowed.

i tried again in the next life.

that time i found you in a diner-

lights neon but soft,

sipping strawberry malts by the bar.

i walked in, you were the first thing

that i noticed, eyes met for a second and

you asked- wordlessly-

if we’d met before.

we built it all again and i decided then to try;

took you to the swing on my porch and

listened as you talked of those that

asked you to go steady,

how you’d turned them all down and

i took your hands-

unbleached, lacy white gloves-

told you everything.

you tripped going down the stairs.

stumbled into my mother’s hydrangea bushes,

your yellow red dress flecked with mud,

and you didn’t let me help you.

said you were really very sorry,

had to go.

had to go.

got into that blue chevy malibu, drove away.

and the rejection killed me.

that time i stayed away for a while

but i had to believe that

with fear came the longing.

i had to know for sure.

this time it was a party-

not a fun sort of party,

a sort of party that’s clouded in dense,

putrid smoke by the name

of mary jane;

drunken laughter.

found myself in a bedroom with you.

sitting on the floor with cassettes all around us,

listening to songs about love tearing us apart.

later i thought,

how fitting.

your father found out.

your blood- no, my blood on the carpet,

three lives full of lies-

our final demise-

and i stopped.

i stopped trying.

in the next life-

there wasn’t one.