flirting with a life only spoken

flirting with a life only spoken

We’re drunk and sparking, our legs are open

Our hands are covered in cake

But I swear we didn’t have any

“The Geese of Beverly Road,” The National, Alligator

someone had to tell him

and even then he may not have listened

a recipe is not a cake

he had a certain affection for words like trapeze

or parachute or the curve of her neck when she’s laughing close-eyed

but he couldn’t even compel himself to watch the movie

of the man who found himself trapped by his arm under a boulder

much less swinging through the air high above the ground

or leaping from a plane with only cloth and rope to guide him down

or leaning close to press his face and lips against her humming throat

no he did not need to make decisions about cutting himself free

in order to return somewhat disfigured to a life being lived

instead his was less dramatic: flirting with a life only spoken

narrated like a voice-over in a movie always being filmed

•

people had made him think

over and over about this bag of rocks

he gripped until his knuckles turned white

and his wrist ached to the point of breaking

it became this thing of carrying with no intent

no quarry left or sought for his bag of rocks

just a denial like an oath or solitary confession

shouted in an empty forest of trees bare of leaves

•

paralysis was more than a word however

for him

like stasis

or Sisyphus always in pause at rock and hard place