Springtime again. For the first time, I find myself wondering whether April passed by just a bit too fleetly. Two weeks ago, walking back to my apartment from morning coffee with my roommate, I was abruptly struck by a wave of green. Lush trees, gleaming grass. The world was suddenly a movie set, wont to change seasons through the invisible hands of some hardworking crew.

Last week, I drove home and felt the passage of time in a hundred small ways: my family golden retriever gone from the house and its rituals, my sister unboxing her life in a new apartment, my father’s family gathering to hold one another and say goodbye to my aunt, his sister. Everything changes color, though rarely all at once. One by one, elements of our world move beyond the frame.

After work, I run three miles around Pittsburgh. For the most part, I’ve finally mapped a few routes evading steep hills and crumbling sidewalks. A song plays, and my memories arrange themselves into a music video. I hate that someone made me feel the lyrics to this, I think to myself. Then, smiling inexplicably, I think again: No, you don’t.

I chat with a drag queen who’s considering leaving New York. She asks about Pittsburgh, and I tell her it’s been a lovely exhale. She tells me the city has lost none of its shine but all of its luster. I wonder, for a moment, about place. Are our homes really evolving so constantly, or do they hold a kind of mirror to our shifting, nebulous want?

She says, like a shrug, I’ll probably stay.

Where else would a couple of beautiful men stumble into the bar and put on an interpretive dance to Enya? On a Sunday?

–

I want, more than anything, to be a reliable narrator. In these stories I lug around, encumbered and resolved, I yearn to capture something true. I’m as prone to embellishment as the next poet, though, harboring the requisite delusion to imagine I am the first man to know these feelings up close.

In this way, I am the incurable hoarder. I revisit the library, feeling these pages’ rushes and pains in full color, every time my mind wanders off. My lover tells me I have a thousand-yard stare, and I just chuckle back. The past is a rich neighborhood, humanity alongside all the benefit of retrospect; I imagine conversations of reconciliation and it’s almost as good as having them.

To snap myself out of it, I feverishly chronicle the moment at hand: the rusting tambourine at the back of the shower, my roommate making sauce and balls in a sun dress and stilettos, dates on the laptop watching forgotten gems from my family VHS collection. Pittsburgh is sunshine, golden ale, sports regalia, and hilly walks. One day, you will be nostalgic for exactly this.

Life does indulge in its cinemas, though. On the afternoon we buried my cousin, a train rattled by, hushing us all into a watchful quiet. On the night one of my lovers pulled his hands away, watching me fall away flailing, we were drunk at a quaint dinner in Tarrytown. Everyone’s meal ended abruptly – I only just remembered – when a skunk wandered through.

Sometimes I glance in the mirror and wonder if my handsomest days are behind me. Did I fathom, then, just how beautiful? These days, my hair has grown long and unruly, and I recall what it was to nurture a mane through a pandemic. I’d pronounced 2020 my ‘lion year,’ a declaration blanketed quickly in rusted, dark comedy. I sheared it, on a whim, months into 2021. O, the desperate euphoria of turning a tiresome page.

I comb my fingers through it on a sunny drive, feel it brush my neck and grin. Perhaps these will be the lion days wrenched from my palms in those younger, wide-eyed days. My lover takes me picture in a grassy park, and I know already I will marvel, someday, at what a wondrous thing I was.

All my best friends are cowboys,
wander beneath the sun-torn skies, we
bandage breaking aches by moonlight, we
bellow our songs, uproarious, fire-lit, together
pretending we never heard the catch
in our throats, jagged the memories
that readied our bodies for adventure
and its myriad fine-print lonelinesses,
infinite, the night that soaks us
in royal blue and one another’s
company, and longer the stretch
of days that part us.

I ask how you’re moving along,
your eyes glimmer their knowing, I
want the story you won’t write
in the letters home, scars in
the open air, the cowboy code:
I’ll be still in your voice’s shaking,
and I’ll bare my bruises at
the campfire, too, and
you won’t hear your story whispered
on the wind, cowboy, ours
the sacred exhale.

O, rugged travelers, we,
the anchors of families, in
shootouts and standstill, circle up
and kick back, shed the itch of
wondering whether the trail was
worthwhile, why we’re so
practiced in our own damn
bandaging, by the sunrise,
we whistle, silhouette lit
across the soft-spoken legends,
guns asleep in our holsters
as we borrow the stars.

How does one celebrate
the birthday of a cat, do I
hold him close, fill his ear
with whispers of the
unlikely magic? Once I
dreamt of a cat stretching
itself along the windowsill,
watching the world, populating
my mornings, bearing witness
to my being, even on evenings
where my skin broke, chest
shaking in the way grief holds,
curl and sleep at my feet through
emails answered, so rare, the
company who asks for so little,
how to honor such a gift?

When a dog dies, I
discover back home, no
gravestone waits, yet the house
echoes with the loss of a
hundred rhythms, the grass
in the yard aching for those
familiar pads, the floor so
bare, the neighboring kids
tilt their heads, a miracle here
then vanished, somehow
looming larger now, old
friend, we adored you, loved
you more than we can bear.

Wherever I wander, so
my cat unfurls, posts vigil
outside the bathroom
door, my lover kisses
his crown in the moving
truck, I go looking for him
from hotel beds, forgetting
he is miles from reach, laugh
in memory of the Halloween
he shattered a plate and
watched me sweep shards,
amused then running, o,
orange companion, I
treasure the absurd life you’ve
carved out alongside mine.

Back home, the megachurch
offers promises of heaven, heavy
is a weary world, just sing your
joy and hate the immigrant,
satellites rise, like a rash,
risen, bathtub redemptions
before steakhouse prayers,
all those girls, making up
stories, Jesus wept, for
God so loved America first,
wept the megachurch home.

I wish I’d become an astronomer,
could crane your neck toward
the indigo infinity, see? it’s a
woman pouring water, but
I canceled that path ninety-four
bridges ago, studied constellations
of poems in lieu of the
heavens, such is the weight
of choosing, tightening the lens,
eliminating potential, this is
my path, hold the rope and
wander in deeper, this.

Reluctant the spring, it
squanders its weeks each time,
vacillating, sunburst melody
and the silver recoil, I
cradle my cat, eyes watering
at the epiphany he has been
sick with no way to tell me,
grief and hope in a braid, hold
the rope tight, promising
something better ahead, look,
tilt your gaze toward a
poem blooming, faintly, in
the sky, can you see it?,
and you squint, then smile,
oh!, for me, perhaps, for us.

March is just another ache –
to be thought of, held in beauty
longer than my beauty holds, I
wonder, do you still remember
the way my smile found you
in those hallways we stumbled
into, haphazard becoming, so
very simple to find a poem
among the blossoms of our aching
hope, white-knuckle stubborn,
the stains beauty pressed
into the wallpaper.

Sun splashes the sidewalk
and the optimists dress for the
beach, yet by evening the
cynics will cackle, snowflakes
bundled like an onslaught of
tiny parachuters, we
scramble beneath awnings
and watch, pant, through the
eyes we had as children,
counting down, three, to
the sprint, two, the
burning of, one, breath,
go.

In black, in white, my
grandmother loses herself
in her Westerns, I watch
her watching, wonder how
she houses her hope, her
grief, her infinite stories, I
remember her prayers all
those bedtimes, bits of
Crayola in a cookie tin,
I want her to know I still
hold her, young, awake,
wanting for more light
in the day, wonder if
her eyes looked like this
as a girl, watching Westerns.

Remember how, by evening,
the grass swelled turquoise?
Jeans stained green at the
kneecaps, tuckered out,
the sliding door and
we were home? Remember
everyone you loved
just within reach? The
light, incandescent, spilling
out into the world?

I’m not one to gnaw my fingernails, but I get the curb appeal of a harmful habit. I never picked up cigarettes or floored it in my car just to see what a hundred miles per hour feels like. Lifetime, I’ve bought two lottery scratchers, and neither gave me a dime or a thrill.

No, none of these are my vices. My flesh has found another pathway entirely to turning in on itself.

I keep, in romantic detail, account of everything I’ve ever lived through. The first kiss on an orange couch, the searing abruptness of harsh words on a subway platform. The shock, somatic, of a rolled ankle pulling me to concrete. The hollow disappointment of people who hugged me hello two weeks ago willfully averting their eyes at the dance hall.

It’s a writer’s impulse, I tell myself. But then I walk with my lover on a sunny afternoon, and a memory rinses over me in vivid color. And there I am, telling it, recounting some bruising bit of history, and his eyes fall, downcast.

Why did I tell that story?

Life has granted me my wisdoms, one of them being that anybody who causes me harm is probably busy warding off hellhounds all their own. I’m wise enough to know I shouldn’t clench my firsts around anger, so I wrench them loose, let things free.

Yet remembering is time travel. Reliving those pages, even the yellowed ones, scrapes these scars raw. And, all over again, I am indignant, bruised, yearning, wanting.

All around me, the world seems to usher itself right along. The noodle shop on 53rd Street becomes a deli, the new tenants next door proudly proclaiming it their bodega. New albums hit the radio, and I’m obsessing over a track from 2014, my throat catching, remembering how it coaxed me to run when my body felt like buckling.

–

It’s summer in New York City, and I’d never admit it to you, but my spirit is a dishtowel, worn. I am waterlogged, wrung out, and haphazardly hung to dry. I am contorted, rigid in both my aching and my denial. I have become fluent in the language of insisting.

I’m really all right, I say, impressing tableside company. I know exactly what I’m doing.

At Fire Island, a man who waged war to bring me back ignores me all day. I don bright sunglasses and a pink coat, invincible in my indifference. I read a book by the pool and bask in the magic of place. Night falls, and we see a drag performer, a dynamo. She spins on her heels, black lights and neon, and we roar. We leave to go dancing, feeling young and infinite. Vodka soda with a splash of cran. Everything, gently rinsed in burgundy.

I turn and see him, passionately kissing someone new. I pour half of my drink between my lips, swallowing daggers as I do. I’ve been here before, I insist, it only hurts if I let it. I inhale and exhale, long, dancing among boys who are watching me for signs of distress. It hurts, so I rinse my tongue in fizz and bite. I toss the plastic cup and decide to walk home, night sky and boardwalk planks.

When I get home, I say very little, brushing my teeth the recommended three minutes. I crawl into bed, finally alone and unwatched, and I sob into a pillow. Before I know it, sleep has pulled me under. I hear none of the pool party happening outside. Hours of moonlight missed.

Light stirs me awake, and I see that it’s 5:30 in the morning. I turn, discovering he never came home. Anxiety jolts through my body like lightning, pulling me to my feet. This is a violation, and I am sliced right open. I fumble with my phone, uncertain of where to start. I walk to the bathroom, catch my face in the mirror, and I point an index finger at myself: You fucking idiot. You stupid, stupid boy.

Disgusted, I walk outside to the patio. The air feels warm, heavy with rumors of last night’s misadventures, and I am solitary in my waking. Restless, I decide on a course of action: I’m going to sit in the hot tub, eyes closed, and listen to august by Taylor Swift.

As the song starts, however, I see figures stir in my periphery. My boyfriend, naked, walking up the steps to our rental, and the bar guy, pulling on clothes and exiting through the greenery. The details are irrelevant now; I keep my eyes shut and shift my focus toward the water bubbling against my shoulder blades.

I feel a palm clasp against my shoulder, and I startle. He is here, and his eyes meeting my eyes breaks me. I collapse immediately into sobs. Come to bed, he says.

You didn’t come home, I stammer. My tears sting hot, my pride in shreds around me. I can’t believe that.

He insists I come back up; I ask for some time. He leaves, and I wait there, broken. At some point, I climb out, pat dry, replace the hot tub cover, climb the steps, slip quietly back into that room.

–

I humbly ask: What good does this story bring me?

When I relive it, I ache. I am embarrassed for myself, sad that this wasn’t the chapter that led me to break free and run ’til my lungs fucking burned. Against my sternum, I feel anger bloom for a man who hasn’t touched me in years, which quickly gives way to sadness. I did not cure his loneliness, and I barely survived the attempt.

The details proliferate. This is one of a hundred stories I carry around, indexed to this love and its bruises. I know the next story is a birthday fight, one where I anxiously pick my first manicure loose, leaving shreds of aquamarine against the boards. I know this crushing affair ends in a Chinese restaurant, where my hand is brutally held to the stove for the thousands ways I come up short. That, after the crush of goodbye, he invites me into a limp hug, and this anticlimax is the perfect ending. I know that I don’t shed a single tear after he leaves, and that this is because his presence was where my all my heartbreak was housed.

Sometimes, I convince myself that holding these stories grants my writing a more vivid palette. That, because I have known emotions like these firsthand, mine is a company marked by deeper compassion, reluctant judgment. I wonder if, by sharing, I open the gate for someone else to feel less alone in their own story.

Other times I wonder if I’ve grown far too fond of these bruises, war wounds aching with the change of the weather. Does my poetry live and die on the freshness of my pain? If not for the crush of living and wanting and the narrow survival, what story do I really have to share?

I hope there is hope. I insist that there is, underline it in adamant red, but I am like the other ministers: The songs I sing most convincingly are the ones I need the most.

but February was never endless,
the held breath shaky
in the cavernous wait,
our pupils opening like
church doors at the
lavender of morning,
we were tender when
we were outlasting,
weren’t we?

Remember the first
Pittsburgh morning, jostled
you from the dark to
bear witness to my breaking,
spilling myself across the page
between chapters, and
again in Manchester I shook you
to steal another hour together,
overlap our limbs and revel
in some nonsensical hour,
the knowing came quiet
and ridiculed all the
thunderstorm romances before.

If I’ve loved you, I have
the perfect story of your joy,
can light you up in the minds
of strangers–beautiful, ephemeral,
human–I dutifully usher a sparkle
of delight, a swell of pain, lovely,
by habit fastidious keeper, hoarding
every detail of anybody who
made one of these days worthwhile,
flowering constantly in the rain, wind,
and fire of all these nights and
their constant surrender to morning.

Dublin pulls on like
beloved gloves I’d forgotten
I lost, familiar, warm,
wandering into the grocery
and pondering the produce
like a man who owes
this city rent, how to
explain this hobby? Trying
on lives and delighting
in the momentary infinite,
grinning in make-believe
connection toward the
woman who allows my
cutting her in line, o
neighbor, my sister!

Sad if true, I am always
homesick for somewhere,
for cornfield summers, for a
campus emblazoned in
autumn’s yearning goodbyes,
the hard-earned scrape of
New York fucking City,
homesick for the dog who
died without one more
forehead whisper, for the
bruises of lovers who
drenched my poetry in
somatic wounds, dilation
of pupils under the pink-lit
glow of fever, forever,

goddamn it, I

find euphoria in the
stacking of worlds, hoarded
memory wedged between
homes I’ve pretended
were mine, jerk off
before bed and kiss
my palm goodnight,
even the grief tastes like
glory spread across lives
like these, my wandering
wants, aid and abet,
drifting loose as the
dream we fight to pinpoint.

I remember those days in
visceral red, blood pearls
surfacing, the startle
of skin interrupted, recall
my feet hammering the
stairwells as I chased you
toward shrieking trains,
sun-soaked parties, the
constant wanting of skin,
pills in our palms, a ritual,
salud!

You liked to split our meals
by halves, so I split myself
accordingly, asking for less,
wanting less, needing
nothing, scraping my knuckles
bloody to prove myself a
good sport, long walk home,
alone, measuring my hurt
in avenues, waiting
for your reach
to quell the indigo bruising.

Glances of pity from
two boys splitting pita, your
fury a sharp-edged thing, only
later would I discover
all my poems of you featured
glass, in prisms and prison,
I could not stop you until
I sobbed, broken, finally.

Ah, those days are over, places
so far out of reach, it’s
been years, and time
peeled the scabs free,
but I go on remembering,
you the hurricane, collision,
moonlight dancer winking
just before you leave
me to want in the dark.

I want for the crackle
of backyard fire, the spilling racket
of amber into the wanting
mouths of glass mugs, the
clink of company, the
way friends exhale when
geographies subside, how
time stretches itself out,
hound sighing softly against
the well-worn rug.

One day, I whisper, we
will be old men grown bored
of all our answers, craving
the very questions that
weary us now, pull us
awake in wonder, keep
us hungry for breath, we
should be savoring the
pens wobbling, desperate
for the page, in our
shaking hands.

Remember the year you
made home of the treetops?
Decades of cave dwelling
and your eyes flooded
the moment you drank
the sunset in the air
of some canopy. I was
there, watching in
wonder before either
of us knew how to walk
such a skyscape, remember
the thunder and how it
drowned in our laughter?
Remember?