Unrequited song

On the day you died

I did not love you.

When you said you wanted to die,

I said nothing.

I said, This is always you. You’re always

like this. I think I said it. Or I stared

at the mirror, seeing myself, seeing you, waiting

for your storms to cease. I’m stormy too. Is that why we always find

ourselves in sympathy? I’m all rain too, like that afternoon

of the rain striking the roof, its white lines

etched on the window, or we were like that room

sealed away in the wet, apart from the world, if we left the door

we would walk in the wilds of the emptiness

our imagination conjures where it lacks. We were nothing in that room.

You knew that. You pouted, you threatened, you cried. But you did so to me,

who was nothing, and nothing responding is nothing doing.

It did not matter. We went to the reunion all the same,

that neither of us really wanted to go, we were going

only because we said we would, as if our

promises were woven into the thread of the universe, and if we pulled

one out, the universe would fall. We stood there limping,

our attire light, in the bedroom which was

the darkest of the apartment’s, darker on this

dark day, hating each other, your black

hair falling onto the claw of your hand, up-pointed

as if holding the weapon of my destruction, your

black dress hiding your claws of attraction.

I did not love every of her, all the time, nor

all of her, some of the time, I did not

love some of her, all of the time, I did

not love her most of the time. I could sit

here and tell you, And yet I still loved her, and yet

we could have easily left the other, as we waited for the

train to arrive, her clutching her purse in the evening light,

her face fading in the evening light.

We don’t even like parties. We don’t even know

why we said yes. We don’t even know why we

honor our commitments. We should be dishonest

people. But, nevertheless, we were

there, our hands on our mouths, our

hearts in our hands, not thinking, not saying

anything really, we were there, to bide the time,

we talked a lot, we laughed a lot, but we were barely

present, and when you stepped away, I didn’t

want you then, I was thinking, this

is some great punch, in some party I don’t want to be.

And that was the last I spoke to you. When I close my

eyes, I still see myself, holding that cup,

not caring where you went. When I close my eyes

I am not running to you, I am not asking you to stay,

I am pathetic with that cup and powerless

and I’m still not loving you.

I did not always love her, I treated her sometimes

as if she were barely there.

And yet I still loved her,

even though I knew so little about the stations of love.

I don’t know how to love. This was frustrating to some.

I don’t know how to love. Clearly, God had it out for me.

I don’t know how to love. So I can’t tell you if she loved me back.

In the

wee hours of the night, I am not loving Eurydice.

In the

hours when others sleep, I am walking around the apartment

thirty times, shuffling myself into sleep, seeing

the dogs of night, seeing who drives at this hour,

thinking of tomorrow, which is today, thinking

of the woman in the bedroom, and wishing

she were someone else, as punishment

for her unable to commiserate with my inability to

sleep, wishing I were transferred to another land

in another world in another life, thinking

how much more of a happiness it would be,

thinking how much of an albatross she is

on my neck, and finally seeing

myself make the last turn, and the last walk

up the steps, and ascending those stairs, thinking

of laying in bed with that immobile shape again.

Eurydice was an object

to me.

We were simply there

with the other.

We hardly did much. We would walk down

the road past the lake, saying nothing. In the

summer our hands were hot, in the winter

we put them in mittens, but in the spring

we held hands, swaying them gaily in the breeze

until they became sweaty, because that’s what

we thought lovers did. We were hardly lovers, we

were more partners, in seeing neighborhood

kids, ice skaters, cars, seeing

the sun sink below the horizon, its

petals of light laid over the lake

like the embroidery of a glove, and when we

were tired we pushed ourselves into the train

and headed home, our dark home, where

the squeak of the floorboards was song enough,

and in the evening I made meals, in the evening

I put our clothes in the hamper, in the

evening I held her

and pressed my lips in her hair

while Netflix played softly in the background.

I thought I was loving her. I was not.

When she left

I regretted all of these things,

because she left without knowing I loved her.

Eurydice did all the loving for me.

She made innumerable

patterns on the bed. I would wake with her feet

on my face. I would wake with hands on my stomach. I would wake

and she would be holding me. And her hair splayed on my face. Eurydice

would sleep to noon, grumble herself awake, shuffle to the bathroom,

and ask what we were doing. I said I don’t know. Then we would drink

coffee. Then roam under a sheet of trees.

We wasted every day.

We threw our lives into the river, hoping they would flash back up. They

didn't. We were not sad to see them go beneath the emerald waters. It was ok

to go nowhere, to do nothing with it, life, I mean, it was ok

we were a lot of afternoons to sift through before we redeemed our lives.

Eurydice told me

she loved me. She told me

after phone calls, when she walked out the door, when

I bought her things for Valentine’s day, when I

bought her things for her birthday, when we

were traveling far from one another, family holidays

between us, after we watched movies that

upset her greatly, and whenever she felt like it,

whenever it was winter essentially, the days when she got

real sad, days when she didn’t want to leave the bed,

white plain, where she complained she had a migraine,

and asked me for water all times of the day.

And I never told her, I love you, back,

I thought men shouldn’t say I love you

so innocently and immoderately, and I always

thought, What a silly thing you are, Eurydice,

for so casually and ineffectually telling someone

so dire a statement as I love you.

I kept my heart closed. I closed my heart

in a book.

I spent so many hours reading

a book.

I have spent so many hours in this chair,

whose arms she sat on (she preferred the left,

closest to the doorway) and asked me questions I

ignored by burying my nose and my sight

in a book. I have spent so many hours ignoring

her by reading aloud the sentences in a book.

I thought I was educating myself, teaching

myself about the world, covering over

the inadequacies of myself and Eurydice, making

myself smarter, and therefore a better

lover to Eurydice, by finding the lover I

could be in a book, or in a song,

as if after so many periods and pauses

I would step on a mountain and see my surroundings

entire. I thought the world was little;

I thought I could have it, because I had so

little, because I had Eurydice and her

dating shows, bad pasta, her little

politics, her disrespect for my reading time.

Clearly, there was little in her.

I seek now

myself in these books, and see nothing in

them, and ask myself, What did you find?

I have burned my books entire.

I have ripped to shreds my writing,

these doggrels, meager, meaning

nothing, I thought they were something, before

I lost her, not that Eurydice is

meaning, but that there is no meaning.

Meaning is a lot of fire and a lot of smoke

and a lot of ashes and a lot of me losing

my hair, and looking like a fool,

because I am looking at these ashes

thinking they’re the ashes of love. Would she

have been touched by these totems of affection?

Should I tell her

they're not for her,

they're for me, to let me know I’m still alive?

I am stepping out

of a book.

I can pile and pile on words,

I can

mount more and more commas, until

it won’t do me any good, I know I fucked up,

I know too late what love is. We were

of a kind. I know that from looking

at other lovers, when I was not looking at her.

We were neither good nor bad, we found ourselves

in pubs, in parks, in malls, in museums,

in dancehalls, in banquets, in bookstores, in

arcades, in plazas, in pizzerias, in

promenades, in squares, in saunas, in cemetaries,

in supermarkets, in pharmacies, in dorm rooms, in zoos,

in creameries, in cafés, in haunted houses,

we were always unwilling participants, and we were always winding through

staircases and hallways for bathrooms, and we were always

guests in a stranger’s eyes, without tickets or passports, and she would

ask me, In the maelstrom, would you find me?

And I never answered yes,

but I didn’t say no.

I don’t know how to love, I can’t love, I don’t love.

I won’t love.

I can blame everyone, I can blame

my father who hurt my mother, I can blame my mother

for overindulging me, I can blame my siblings for being selfish,

I can blame this world which confuses love

for commodity, I can blame God for making me

impossible, and I would still blame myself at the end.

I wish

I never sought her. I wish we never met. I wish we

hadn’t met in the rain, our umbrellas up, hardly hearing

the other in the gunfire, happy all the same, the lamp

slopping pools of light on our faces, where she

hid a smile, that danced in her eyes.

I wish I

never thought she was cute, never thought she was smart,

never thought she was good-looking, never thought we

clicked, never thought I could take care of

her, and never forgave her, never defended

her, never coddled her, never argued

with her, never had sex with her,

never got angry with her, never asked her

to pay the phone bill, never put her name

on the lease, I merely wanted to live

with her, I merely wanted her beside

me, I just wanted to love her

so I could come to love myself.

Eurydice,

we held hands

we lashed arms

braided our legs

pressed our lips

folded our bellies

our cheeks

brushing,

and, releasing, tumbled upon the other,

but I

just wanted you to hold me

in front of the stars.

And, did I hold her in return?

I’m sorry

for not having held you.

I’m sorry

for being absent.

I’m sorry for not being the one you wanted.

I’m sorry there wasn’t a happier way out.

And, I’m sorry

this comes too late. That it took me this long

to come to any understanding of you, that

words fail to describe you, and words fail

to make me more satisfied of you. Eurydice,

you were you, you’re a warmth in a cold

earth, you’re a luminosity in a dark

world, you’re a blade of grass on an empty

plain, because you were, nothing else, and death

took that away from you, and took from me my

seeing you as you truly were. The words

never come out right, I always misinterpreted

you, and I’m doomed to apologize to you forever

and an eternity more seek my way out of

forgiveness because I haven’t made up my mind.

Eurydice, I am

descending

to find myself again

and if I don’t, then I know

this life

wasn't made for me. Eurydice, you fell

so I could fall.

So fall for me,

once more, Eurydice, fall

so I may come up whole.