confessions (this bay of love)

confessions (this bay of love)

I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees
I never married but Ohio don't remember me

“Bloodbuzz Ohio,” The National

they told him “Don’t move”

their voices hollow

echoing as if in a tunnel

he lay perfectly still on the table

arms crossed on his chest

waiting as if in a coffin

although he knew their commands

were arbitrary except to control

like the bright light in his face

“What do you want?” they asked

he lay thinking about which word

they had weighted in their question

then

“I want to be loved,” he heard himself say

“I want to be desired, I want to be craved—”

drifting to the piano haunting that song

“That’s not so much,” they interrupted

“That’s not so hard” voices not comforting

but swarming his head like bees or smoke

“—by her,” he heard himself shout

(he thought bark)

“By only her, only her,” his voice trailing

tucked between his legs because he knew

“Ah, so, that is entirely different, you know”

he wanted to say “I read Foucault in translation”

but his throat was frozen like a mossy rock wall

there he felt tears pooling in his eye sockets

and them surrounding him stiff on the table

just before he recognized the straps tightening

“I can barely breath” he would have said

he couldn’t think clearly beneath his own tears

had he confessed yet another mistake?

“Well, since you mentioned her, let’s do that”

and this was the part he always expected

in his dreams of being strapped to a table

surrounded by disembodied voices buzzing

“You think this is funny,” they stated the words flatly

and this was where he knew something else

his happiness of only her stilled them

like a life-sized puzzle of the entire universe

every piece black and the clock ticking

“Belarus is flooding,” he heard himself laughing

he imagined a wolf howling in moonlight

high in the shadows of Pico de Orizaba

this bay of love they will never understand