after Catullus
1.
She is weeping over a dead bird. It is not even her bird. It has never known a cage, a swing, or any other accoutrement of a lover’s captivity. Small, with one wing flung full length from its body in a bright fan of feathers, the other, crushed, lying across its breast, a small wind ruffling the surrounding down, it has stopped time with an operatic gesture. It has, composed as it is, my love sitting on her heels rubbing the tears away. Hit by a car, but still in one piece, its head turned in profile, it looks up at her with its blackest eye.
I keep a respectable distance. Standing on the shoulder of a freeway I also have one eye out, doing what I can to make certain my darling has both the solitude and the time she needs to make amends with the little gone soul. The car is pulled over to the shoulder several hundred feet away with the emergency blinkers on. Since I was the one who was driving, who killed the bird as it flew in the way, this is my penance, to stand facing the oncoming traffic for as long as it takes my beloved to be ok, hoping that the cars and the tractor-trailer rigs that pass us by, one after another with a whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, will not kill us, will not leave us splayed on the side of the road frozen in our own dramatic postures.
She picks the bird up in her hands and starts walking toward the car. I know her well enough to know that she will want to drive to a bucolic place and bury it.
I do not mind. It is the perfect day for a drive in the country.
2.
There are those who will tell you that one woman is all women. It is a lie. No woman is the same source of pleasure as another, or the same source of pain, even. I, for one, do not pay attention to differences in labia, ankles, eyes, nipples,
hair, hands, mouths, calves, forearms, stomachs, breasts, necks, noses, clavicles, knees, calves, fingers, toes, shoulders, backs, buttocks, teeth, eyebrows, wrinkles, scent, secretions, timbre of voice, laughter, posture, fetishes, makeup and clothing. Well, maybe I do, but so what?
I tell you as truthfully as I can, given my utter lack of objectivity where you are concerned, a woman is as distinct from other women as one celestial body is from another. You, my Lesbia, are as different from this world as is the sun. And just as hot.
3.
My love for you is an addiction, impossible to break. You should know. It is the same with you. You have tried everything to break it. And then some.
Knowing how deep is the pair bond between us, I took turns playing Jupiter with your best friend. (I was really mad at you at the time for screwing dozens of guys behind my back, you porn star bitch.) Where was I? Oh, yes. Between the hooves, battery-powered lightning bolts, feathers and golden showers, we stirred to great heights the red spot’s raging storm.
4.
He is too much the poet. He talks too much. He thinks too much. He is too full of himself in too humble a way. Everyone admires him. When he goes into a room, people stand at the edges of his conversation. He is polite to the point of insulting. It is his greatest flaw. I cannot say enough bad things about him. He is a mirror gazing into a mirror. In an age of bad poets, where the lame poet god is concerned, his is the greatest sacrifice of all.
5.
My love, our home our house is a jewel in the crown of civilization. Everything is here: books, videogames, paintings, furniture, computers, kitchen accessories, climate control. We move from room to room as the day progresses, kissing hundreds of kisses.
6.
I was sick with a fever and reveled in it, in the sweat and the burning, the air going in and out of my lungs in a hot wheeze, the delusions and crazy dreams, until Lesbia came to check on me, put me in a car and rushed me to the hospital.
7.
I hate and love. If you ask I cannot tell you why, but I know this: I feel it and it fucking hurts.