Can we talk
about how many times
I almost blocked your
number? Deleted you from
my life completely.
The end. But somehow,
our bond only grows
stronger and tougher and
more gnarled, rooted in thick
soil like suntanned oak trees
with thousands of rings
in manicured suburban
neighborhoods. I couldn’t rip
you out of me,
even if I tried.
Our friends say
that we are fools
to stay in love
with each other,
but I can’t unstick
myself from the
glue that attaches
me to you.
You and I
stayed up all night
talking about nothing
in the dim light of an old restaurant.
Outside,
your glasses fogged up
in the snow
and I felt your warm hand in those
leather gloves on the small of my back
grabbing for me as I almost slipped
on the ice.
And now you’re thousands of miles
and thousands of text messages away from me.
We tried to make it work,
somehow long distance always wins the battle.
Until next time
I can see you in the New England snow
with more walks around the Commons
and dinners in dimly lit restaurants.
Maybe it’s how your hair
falls across your forehead
or how your eyes constantly change
colors, my vision of you shifting
along with it, you keep me excited
as a new you unravels within every glance
as you smirk at me, secretly taunting
me for having a crush on you.
![Joshua Beckman, “[Lying in bed I think about you]”](https://heartbreakandcigarettes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/joshua-beckman-poem.jpg?w=1000)
Lying in bed I think about you,
your ugly empty airless apartment
and your eyes. It’s noon, and tired
I look into the rest of the awake day
incapable of even awe, just
a presence of particle and wave,
just that closed and deliberate
human observance. Your thin fingers
and the dissolution of all ability. Lay
open now to only me that white body,
and I will, as the awkward butterfly,
land quietly upon you. A grace and
staying. A sight and ease. A spell
entangled. A span. I am inside you.
And so both projected, we are now
part of a garden, that is part of a
landscape, that is part of a world
that no one believes in.
Joshua Beckman, “[Lying in bed I think about you]”
I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.
Pablo Neruda, “One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII”
I lay in bed, gazing
at the sky as clouds
roll past. The sun beams
down onto my face, and
all I can think of is
the last time we kissed.
“The last time.” – sugar and sandalwood
Life expands
as it goes on.
Opportunities
open wide
with experience.
“Life expands.” – sugar and sandalwood
Even though a year
has passed, I still
think of you and
what we could have been.
“One year.” – sugar and sandalwood
I waited for you
like the sand waits for
the ocean tide to roll back
in on the beach. Shifting it,
rejuvenating,
making it new again.
“I waited” – sugar and sandalwood
heartbreak and cigarettes 