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COBBLESTONE AND TANGERINE ❋ Zachary Rosen
i met this girl who is probably my best shot at happiness
in the traditional sense of contentment and joy and
not feeling like total shit all the time.
she likes to drink good whisky and has a kind of wit
that takes getting used to.
i thought i was clever and i laboured under that impression
for years
but she has put me in my place with nothing more than a
word and a smile and a stare
and an offhand comment about how to learn
and what it truly means to learn.
the worst thing is that i cannot shrug nor shake her off
as being too good for me
as she would have me if she could but
her heart is in pieces, i think
so i’m left in the lurch without a leg to stand on
or a pot to piss in and i’m running out of metaphors.
she has these pale bright blue eyes and light brown hair
and she looks a lot like a lot of the other girls i have loved
but its different because she’s not just beautiful she is
strange and weird and all of those adjectives that
i have noted down to look for in love but that scares me
because i made that list to prove there’s no such thing
as a soulmate
because fuck the one i’ve had twenty-five (or so)
and they’ve all been beautiful but they haven’t
been strange they have been so much
in control
and she is like a stone inside a tangerine
that you don’t expect to bite into but
you put in your pocket because you were struck by the moment
and now she is sitting at home and
i am a thousand miles away and even
when i am close to her i am a hundred miles from home
so what’s the point
if she would have me, i would have to have her and hold her
and take her anywhere she wants to go because i am
indecisive and patient with my love and she is full of motion
and she will need to cut me in half to inspect inside
and if she finds corruption and approves of it and smiles
i will know its love because fuck freshly paved concrete
cobblestone is the future
because where else will your cigarette butts go but
between the cracks between the stones
and between the cracks between your teeth.
she doesn’t like poetry
which is good because i don’t either i just
write it because if i didn’t i would probably burn down my house
with vegetable oil like a great and terrible vegan arsonist
best of all she is musical, not that she plays music but
that she feels it she dances and sings and for all
i know she does neither well but she does them and thats
all that matters because you have to feel it inside you
the way you feel a drink on a cold winter night burning you up
and tearing you apart so you can put yourself back together
so i can take the pieces of my heart
and crudely push them together like the wrong puzzle pieces
into something even nearly resembling the picture on the front of the box
so that i am not playing a role but rolling with the punches
and then i might just feel ready
when i will never be ready , but thats
thats the point isn’t it,
that every day will be like the first day
and if its not, then it will be the last