Michelle and I wrote this prose poem together this spring. I'm sorry if she is upset that it's up here, but I keep thinking of this part she wrote "I would like both: that quiet, secret part of you, if it was all of that quiet, secret part of you; but I also need the all, the indefinite, the definitive, the closed-circuit, a current through us and only us, to sough in this room, everything gentle and in slow motion." This describes everything.

In the beginning I thought, here is a person I have sometimes seen before. It’s funny that way, how a person can exist, but not really be there. So I say no to the idea of you, because the idea of you has run through me, yes, gone through me and completed me and gutted me, at least several times before. It was illogical and the first time you tried to kiss me I pulled away and you asked me if it was wrong and I didn’t know, because your body, though beside me, though comfortable in ways that I am not comfortable inside myself is foreign and threatening. I thought of mouse traps, cheese. How easy it is to slide ones head inside the clasp. I know it could come down on me at any moment that you decide it’s time. Despite my attempts to be definitive, I know you are in complete control. I know this when I notice that your gaze has drifted a slight left or right, so that you are not exactly looking me in the eyes anymore; we have begun disintegrating. These calculated insecurities, the way you ask me why you are not enough. I start to think about your skin after you already outthought mine. We are at different steps in this process. Tire of me already. I cannot give you all of me, I cannot be wildly impressive at every turn, and I cannot give you anything if you are always only half here, half-hearted; everything, to you, is momentary. It is enough of me, sitting there. You picked out parts of my body I forgot were there, which is most of it. Later you say I want more of you than you want of me and I say yes, the fact that you have skin is not enough for me. You were never good at making lists, except figuring out where to place me. I’ve outlined the ways in which we do not exist in the same room: the sound, the push, the people always around you. I would like both: that quiet, secret part of you, if it was all of that quiet, secret part of you; but I also need the all, the indefinite, the definitive, the closed-circuit, a current through us and only us, to sough in this room, everything gentle and in slow motion. All I can think is that image of you leaving, real or imagined. The way that hugging turns into clinging and I hate this notion: that I have clung, that you can tell people that I am clingy, am clinging. When something comes in too close, the vision of it leaving is too large for it to be seen.