10.22.25

There was that winter in LA when I'd taken K___ down to the izakaya near the airport. The entire dinner I stared at other people, wondering if they were happy. There was a barrier between me and K that I couldn't tear down, no matter how charming I thought I was. Later I must have driven them back home. They smacked the hood of my car and called it a time machine. I still remember them smiling and waving at me from their front yard. I couldn't understand why I cried on the way home. That was also one of first winters I spent with the ocean. Everything was grey. The sky, the water. I lived in a house with bougainvillea falling all over the driveway. I never needed a reason to love anybody. None of us do. I started looking towards the future that winter. I passed words over to you to make sure you were still there. I was looking past the house, the garden, and the lover to where I am sitting now. Can you hear me? Can you feel me now? 

Today I thought about texting K___. I still feel their hands pushing back my shoulders that last night I saw them in Los Angeles. They were trying to help me breathe. 

My father's lover complains to me that my father never finishes his thoughts. He begins and drops off somewhere, to a place we can't reach him. 

Words, dropping in and out. Earlier when I was driving I remembered the sensation of writing. I touched something deep inside myself, deeper than pain, deeper than love. The other side of language, where something unnameable lives.