I'm a boy

TOWARDS A THEORY OF PROXIMITY

I’m not even sure what that might mean,
not in a world of numbered meaning,
in which I’m close to sloped elm shade,
it falls against my door weighing
nothing at all but I love it the same,
and I am near train tracks where
I stop sometimes to watch the loudness
of the cars bearing glittery coal
away to a mouthy, pitched fire,
and that I’m not near that
blossom of flame, burning the recovered
dead, it kills me some nights
because I have thought,
leaning my weight against the door,
picking at the peeling strip
meant to stop seeping cold from slipping in,
picking at it like a wound,
with this stick I hold in
my mouth, all because I have thought
of a woman’s hand, water
she bore in glass back to the bed
we’d share like it was air
or candy, a surfeit of rain
beneath a brick arch where once
we kissed a long time,
and that water she gave me first to drink,
and how cold it was
nothing could prepare me for,
as though the faucet was
those Midwestern mornings made of ice,
and everything seemed near,
my body to hers, hers to mine,
it seems false now, the attempt
to parse our flesh
or say that her skin
meant anything more
than mine to me now means, tonight,
but it doesn’t stop me
from saying a thing,
saying this, every word a wish, a blank invitation.