the space above my ears.

Ferris Wheel Duet

I don't want to see you when I'm high.

I don't want to see you when you're high.

I don't want us to keep hearing each other's names being called out across the sea and wondering who the other's new pirate lover is.

Standing in the breeze at the bow of the ship, hair tied back with a string of rope, you keep finding yourself counting out all the bottled letters floating among the masses of soggy kelp and shredded ball gowns.

Here, you do not know what they predict.

Would you be better off like this?

Reaching for the life preserver stowed precariously inside a chest near the mainmast, but deciding against it at the last minute?

Watching them drift into the dawn as I did?

I used to think the Earth's core was cold like an ice cube in which the center lives longest, or takes the longest to live.

It was a rude awakening, finding out that everything I know is living on a line between two unhappy mediums.

A place neither nearer nor in between.

It constructs its own memoir, poses for its picture in the obituaries.

The second letter of the 57th word is writing its own story, nibbling on buttery dreams up past the haunted house, sleeping comfortably in its many niches.

It is lulled to sleep by the revving engines in cold weather.

Lonely footsteps following each other home.

Muffled shouting at some sort of protest drowned out by tears of shame.

Shame that you came here, shame that the idea ever even appealed to you.

Shame because you're only here to rub up against other bodies, feel the warmth, hear the breath enter and leave their lungs.

All of it just to remind yourself that there are indeed more things in the world than you and your shadow.

All just to have an excuse to leave the ship.

And every time you do it, every time you let yourself go, you're afraid it will be the last time.

You'll be in too deep, the rope of the anchor too short, dropping deeper and deeper into the dark water until it pulls the boat under with it.

The heart palpitations will bottom out, cutting their losses and abandoning you as you sink.

I know you're scared of this because I'm scared of it too.

I'm scared I won't make it in time with my lifeboat and body heat to bring you back.

When you're gone, it will become just me and the things you dream about and you don't want that, you said it yourself that you wouldn't want that for anyone.

Especially not me.

Can it not be a "when" anymore?

Just an "if" for now would be alright.

We'll work our way up to not thinking about it at all.

But for now, if you go, I will follow.

If you kiss me goodbye, I'll kiss you good morning on the other side.

We can stuff your fear of corruption into a bottle and toss it into the ocean with everyone else's debris.

You will say this is not the way at first.

I will look you in the eyes long and hard and ask; "What will you do, then? Stuff it in a cotton pillowcase?

Grow a third stomach just for the bones?"

You'll consider this for a second and be cured of doubt forever.

Cured and smiling and alive as we pick the bits of linoleum tile out of each other's hair, off each other's clothes.

So far above that we're below, so close to holiness yet directly beneath a grey area.

It's kind of blurry, makes my head ache.

She chose me over drugs, I suppose, that was a win.

I told her to eat and sometimes she did.

She said you were essential, but still cut you out of the scrapbook photos and still popped all the pretty questions like shotgun shells.

We were used.

Pushed away, toward, across, beneath, into, out of, wherever.

Everywhere

And

Elsewhere.