Work Text:
1.
What’s the weather like today? Steel water,
with bits of storm underneath.
This is the worst to sail through, when the waves feel like kitchen knives
and your ship like butter.
We all have sailed through ice and fire, but I think this the worse–
this counterfeit sea, the falsely calm surface and the current beneath.
I like being underwater better, right in the belly
of this very large beast.
This is what I do, I talk one way and act another,
I say I hate good weather then sail to safety,
I say I hate chaos but run into it straight.
You wanted an adventure and I wanted to keep it safe.
You wanted an adventure, and I said Here is the plan I made for you,
follow this path I made for you, the Xs and checks and dotted lines
that will all guide you to the way of lesser mishaps
and chances of failures .
Actually I said They will guide you to success , but I think
you understood what I meant, I think you understand
that I have high ideas on hope, but realistic ideas on hopelessness.
You always are discerning at the worst possible time.
You wanted an adventure, and you said Don’t you want
an adventure too? You never asked with words. I appreciate that.
I would have said no.
You wanted an adventure. You took the map
but you never said you were going to follow it. You did not
and I can’t even blame you because
each time it goes wrong it hardly feels like you fucked up at all.
2.
Four dreams in a row
and I wake up vowing I only help you for myself,
the way you must have helped me for you,
and I won’t try and gauge the gaps between the words:
they look like hypocrisy.
Four dreams in a row
and I wake up swearing I only help you for myself
the way I was supposed to. It was never supposed to be
about hope, ideals, a greater world.
But ideals and ambitions are like the sea and the sky
stacked one on the other: on a clear day, you can’t tell the difference.
Four dreams in a row,
and finally a real nightmare, and not just the feeling
of apnea in the open air. I am in the chest,
and the bang is about to sound, and all I can think is
if I don’t open it right now I’ll never see Cora’s smile again.
I’m in the chest, my chest, or on the outside of it.
Someone is there. I can’t open it.
Four dreams in a row
and I come back saying I’ll want you the same way you want me
which, depending on the day, is either not at all or enough
to make me light-headed.
You are not the data that changes in this happenstance.
I swear it’s never you.
3.
When you’re at sea, you fight
waves,
monsters,
bad weather
(it’s always that bad fucking weather)
“And pirates”, you’d also say,
“if you get lucky”
and you always get lucky so I
raise my fists and prepare for the fight.
I try and try not to feel these shivers,
try squashing down the exhilaration, the thought
that it doesn’t get any better than this.
4.
I don’t ask what the weather will be like today.
Knowing my luck, it will storm
all the way through.
And I don’t know how to be anything other than myself;
I tried and tried. It made me survive, but also hate living.
Now I am stuck with whatever you see in me.
The chest is still closed, but the lungs breathe easier.
And I know you can’t, realistically, make an organ
into a person, but he turned himself into my heart
and everyday I carry him on my sleeve or over my skin.
There is a lesson in this somewhere, but you always
stop listening when I lecture you,
so won’t you try cracking the ribs open
and I will ask for the weather again,
won’t you try making the sun into a person
and I won’t blame you for wrecking my plans.