TC Tolbert

I believe that witness is a magnitude of vulnerability. That when I say love what I mean is not a feeling nor promise of a feeling. I believe in attention. My love for you is a monolith of try. The woman I love pays an inordinate amount of attention to large and small objects. She is not described by anything. Because I could not mean anything else, she knows exactly what I mean. Once upon a time a line saw itself clear to its end. I have seen the shape of happiness. (y=mx+b) I am holding it. It is your hand.

You said I will pull you out of my body in 237 ways. What you wanted was beautifully to sever things. Here love: the same things. changed. Finally: a taxonomy of afterthoughts. As though you were the one who was sleeping. Breathing in the marrow of would. You, who are a valley of no, I hear the music leaking. (How she. How she. How I.) You say low key and I do not believe you. I forgive everything: the perseveration of skin. My hands that are a chopping block and I cannot touch him. I cannot touch him without not touching me. Because if you leave, and you are already leaving, there are three. But you say less than three. And the couch, in your absence, is crenellated. And who is going to watch us as we leave. To add to the list of changing things: life preservers are no longer about preservation. They have become less holy. P F D = personal flotation device. Endlessly possible. Unlike wood. Stacey May Fowles wants a lover who will hit her. (I do not believe in submission.) I want you to erase me. This is a kindness. A kindness you tell me. A kindness I do not deserve. On the floor. By the bed. Hotel Congress. March 19, 2005. Room #23. We are a long way from disintegrated. You said Now. Look at me. And I did. And you bloomed. (When my mother died, I will say. Many years after my mother has died. But I will not believe her. I'll be like my grandmother who despite my parade of girlfriends and her profession that nobody should be mean to them, still doesn't believe in being queer. I don't believe in being dead, I'll tell my dead mother. And just like you she'll repeat herself.Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New.) I expect there will be a morning when you walk up to this very gate while I am sitting here. I know this. I know you less each time I see you. I know this like I know you are more lonely than glass. To your languishing. To your bubbly. To your recent. To your hologram. To your desperately. To your seeking. To your dictaphone. To your you. Neuromuscular facilitation is just another way of saying Vancouver. Always is yet a matter of roller derby. Just in love with you. You, more than sleep. In the top drawer is a photograph of them touching. It is not so much that it is a photograph. It is that it is a depiction of what. not could. I want to tell you about my body. About testosterone as unwitting art historian. About recovery. Me(n). What it feels like underneath there. The part you cannot know. but should. Either way. It's a house. It's a house like everyone else has. I take things away. I don't take them for good. How delirious must we sound when we are falling. I miss you, you can't even imagine. And how bad at math.Less than three. Less than three. Less than three. And what if. I completely remember it wrong. What if I remember there were two of us. And then what if. there was only one death. I do not believe in the existence of holes that lead to nowhere. Muscle memory remains an enigma. Still, you can touch her. You cannot touch her without not touching me. (And still) you are not not a part of me. The world is uncharacteristically unresponsive. I could thank you. You stay with me. like grass.

Because the only view we have is the one that looks down on the knees. Praise perspective. Praise shared disdain. Praise space made by connective tissue; the synaptic cleft; elbowroom at the dinner table; polite conversation; lies you push through your teeth. Because dissecting a dog's heart won't change the way it thinks. Praise redirected traffic. Praise the gnarled lip that defends the gentle bones. Because your mother was a seahorse. And to think of her thin is to empty all the ice from the tea glasses; to strain the soup by driving it through your hand. Praise tablecloths; sway-back chairs; the plastic folds that protect slice after slice of cheese.