the burden of context

i want to say
"you rest at the foot of the bed,
and i am pained by the 3 feet between us,"
but how can i want you so simple
in the tempest of academia, feminism,
and the like

i could speak of the borders
constructed by language or culture,
how every word and look that was ever thrust upon has built the divide
that privileges me with the pillow
and damns you to the end with the cracker crumbs and wine stains

or perhaps this rolling blue blanket is really the Atlantic Ocean
and ours is a problem of colonization.
is our love really just conquer and conquest?
have i exoticized you to eroticize you,
your brown and savage masculinity some impulsive euro-bred addiction?

and can you just be far away from me,
or are you lejos de, loin de, vom
?
am i hurting us if i can't need you in every language?

is each touch a confirmation of some oppressive discourse?
can you kiss me without joining some age-old conversation?
can you fuck me?
can YOU fuck me?
can you FUCK me?
can you fuck ME?
and be certain of everything that means?

but then

you look at me, see me
and we're somewhere beyond words and philosophies,
our lips meeting above now and history,
and every thought every one ever constructed
is reduced to: skin.

i hope it isn't all a show

oh, but i hope it is, too.

you come back

You come back into the room
where you've been living
all along. You say:
What's been going on
while I was away? Who
got those sheets dirty, and why
are there no more grapefruit?
Setting foot on the middle ground
between body and word, which contains,
or is supposed to, other
people. You know it was you
who slept, who ate here, though you don't
believe it. I must have taken
time off, you think, for the buttered
toast and the love and maybe both
at once, which would account for the
grease on the bedspread, but no
now you're certain, someone else
has been here wearing
your clothes and saying
words for you, because there was no time off.

my grandma started disappearing again (or rather appearing as someone elses)

you, too, seem to have a way of evaporating.

evading me
somewhere in a bottle
or a text message
or my saturday nights

reception

you left the words porchside for me to stumble upon.
and they meant much more than they should.

thank you for the warmth, even if it wasn't love
but instinct

and thanks for watching
as i walked on
saying nothing.

it's a sin to tell a

words have a way of exploding; we forget that, you and i.

maybe language isn't always such a blessing
and?
maybe it's what makes us, us,
the most foolish.
the most guilty.

not to sound immature, but

i'm growing up. really.