Originally published in Gypsophilia Magazine, Volume 2 Issue 6

In The Backseat Of My Car

In the backseat of my car, I touched your secret skin. In the backseat of my car, I discovered what remained hidden. It is not that I know all of you, that is something you will keep, always, just out of my reach. And you will let me love you but never possess you. I am enslaved by this concept of desire, of affliction, and I come back for you, over and over. You know this of me and you willingly play along. You are the star and I am the planet, and the closer I come, the more completely I will burn. If I am to have you I will be consumed, if I am to have you there will be nothing left. 

In the backseat of my car, I found my way to you. Outside the world falls away and the fog that shrouds the windows is simply the edge of the void, without form, or color, or memory of what was before. 

I fill every space with you. 

I fill every space though I have never found you. 

You are a transference of desire, a fabrication of dreams. 

In the backseat of my car, I lose myself in you. In the first soft touch the path behind me closes, overgrown and reclaimed by the world before you. Outside the night is wet and the rain falls hard against the breath coated windows. 

If I were to fall, if I were to leap off this ledge into the dark night of my desire, what would be my fate? Where would you be as I fell through that void?  

I sit in a cafe. I feel the world rushing by. I am falling sideways through the world. I see you at a table near the window, sunlight streaming from behind, sending shadows of you to almost touch me. 

All the sounds of the world have become man-made, manufactured, and devised. 

They are the creations of artists, of engineers, of visionaries, 

so certain they can do better than god, than nature, than what came before.

This is the artifice of the senses; 

the real being replaced by the unreal. 

My life is contained in the one sentence that could possibly describe you. And therefore my life cannot be contained...for you can never be described. 

And perhaps this is why we are drawn to one another.

I look for reasons as the windows clear and you are no longer here next to me. If I am to take your hand in those moments of our final breaths, if I am to look into your eyes as the years we spent together dissipate into the still, silent air...if I am, I will be for you. If I am, I will, with those last breaths, tell you one more time that I love you. 

Mostly I am caught wondering if this is what will become of us. Mostly I am caught in that moment of recognition that one day I will be without you. And this is the despair that swims always alongside my joy. These two things are never apart and they are more entwined perhaps, even than the two of us. 

I hardly noticed as you slipped away, the feel of your lips still on my lips. And you do this always to spare me the sadness of the moment of your departure. It is a lovely gesture but the sadness is still and always there. It lingers with your scent, and I feel the sting and ache of it fill my lungs. It drowns me and I struggle to take a breath. Perhaps one day I will learn to breathe underwater, perhaps one day I will welcome the moment and you will no longer need to protect me from this, and other things.  

All that we are is the sum of this understanding, that you will always save me from drowning. I know this is too much to ask of you, but I go on asking still. And you never seem to mind and I trust you would tell me if you ever did. And I will tell you everything — even, and after, if you said to me gently...

“that is enough talk for now, my love”

For you, this is a simple transition to flight.

But you are much lighter than me. 

The world cannot hold you, the earth cannot hold you, and I know also, that I cannot hold you either. I am a stone watching the clouds drift, or the birds fly high above me. I am a stone, believing it was born of the heavens, that the twinkling stars are beacons calling me home. But you are like the clouds and birds. For you the sky is home. For you, the earth is foreign and confined, heaven, a place devoid of life. But still, from the sky, you love me — this stone that wants to believe it is the progeny of stars.