concord a book for the branches that run through my lifelines
1. you’re first because you were always first, except that one time that you weren’t
2. sometimes I think there are bits of us that no-one but us gets, and then sometimes – okay, lots of times, there are things even you don’t get things I wish I could stamp on the backs of your hands so you’d never forget them, so you’d read them with every movement and maybe maybe they might just find a way in there somewhere, bit by bit things I wish I could spell out in spaghetti hoops for you things I hope one day I’ll be there to whisper into your hair at night and I’ll catch fireflies in jars for you (we don’t have them here and I want to see them sometime and I want to see them sometime with you)
3. those rare times I actually try and sleep, I kind of treasure as thinking time, silent moments chewing on my knucklebones, and I almost inevitably think of you – I strategise. I map, I plan the days and the planes and the pennies to find my way there (didn’t I promise?) and afterwards the ways and the paths and the faultlines my lips will sketch out on your skin
4. speaking of maps you and I are like contours on the timeline of a mountain range together, apart, together we grow and we change and we separate and return three steps forward, one step back together, apart, together and I’m kind of proud at what we’ve transcended, kind of proud that a communal kind of crazy will always win out that we can always be fireworks that are still a kind of home
5. I guess I’d find it kind of easy to write about the eyeliner, the awkward photographs the sexting or the collective sighs, but (I told you this was difficult) you’re more than a poem; you’re my mirror and my gulfstream. you’re too many three am conversations to count. I talk like a lot of people, but mostly I just talk a lot like you. we’re a clusterfuck of irony and pretention and I’m pretty sure I’d feel much less human without you, and much less invincible.
6. I wonder if you’re like me, and never used to let anyone else read anything you wrote? I didn’t, anyway, but you’re you and you’re wonderful and I can’t remember ever being scared to let you see things I’ve scribbled out in ten minutes. it’s that, basically, that feeling like things that shouldn’t be normal just are I’ll say the things I might censor (and this is me, no filter at the best of times so you should know I trust you, okay?) and there isn’t much I want more than to break the barrier between the life where you can do the same, and the life I’m not so sure about