Jessy Assy

And because I could not stop for this poem,
this poem kindly stopped for me.

It begins, as all poems do,

 (or should)

with church bells, and sins.
 

Its contents:

glass cups carefully placed

under running tap water,

the drip drip drip incrementally

fading

till it reaches a lull plateau;

with every droplet diving into

emptiness -

into soft tremors

and voices

that whisper

"blood is family"

obscenities

now retaliated with

echoes

chiming back

"family is blood"

realities.

I think of how they reveal

an exquisite taste in

music and Berettas-

the twin shell casings

as deleterious as corroding keys;

former harbingers

of a placebo

of hope

I salivate,

to the multitude

of possibilities present

in every "someday", "somehow",
and some corner

of this strange cosmic universe

where our thoughts are likely

to have "met"

as though they had been

lawyers,

ambassadors,

United Nations representatives.

It is certainly

inexplicable then,
that the poem should end

in tears
still falling sideways,
notwithstanding

a slightly-backwards-tilted head

as the reservoir can only fill up

so much

before it overflows

on its aggressor.

A kind of Stockholm Syndrome.

And I love you.
I love you.
But I am conflating

the idea of you

with the actual corporeal

entity of you.

And I am still blinking

absentmindedly

to the stars,

the city lights,

and the cars,
and conjuring up my stories
while thinking of you
and thinking of how

indeed I love you,
but it is not you,
it is not you that I love at all.