Anastasiya

Chapter One: Let's Begin in Medias Res....

I'm beginning to think that I'm never going to tell you,
because there are so many ways, too many ways,
infinite ways to say it all wrong...to screw it all up.
To s-s-stu-stutter and stam-mer.
To be too forward, too honest.
To discomfort, confuse, and hurt you,
when all I want and--really--all I need
to achieve the vocalized pinnacle of "spectacular"* slowly and sincerely
is a smile on your face,
a brush of your knee or fingers,
when I proclaim that--
when I work up the courage,
and an impulsive and powerful enough "FUCK IT" to say
"i miss you...terribly. i mean, [take a breath] being with you."

Chapter Two: Let's Continue with Reality....

You're not going to smile, though.
You're not going to embrace me then, trying out your broken Italian:
"Ti amo, mi amor!" or is it "amore?"
You're not going to say what you said or do what you did
the last time I told you, the first time I told you
or showed you, rather, that I like you.
No: that I liked you.
Yes: that I love you.
You're going to feel awful and want to go home.
And I understand, and know and love you too well and too much to say any more. Much more
but do know and remember...
Years ago we spoke of 'unconditional love.'
I've forgotten who argued what point, but it's true.
I'm still in love, unconditionally.
Mom once told me "I haven't seen nor spoken to him in more than
______________thirty years, and I still think about him all the time.
i still love him."

Chapter Three: Let's Realize How Hard It Is to Face Reality....

No last words and no goodbyes.
We say what we must, and move on. Not because we're strong, but because we're different.
And those same differences which once drew us to one another now tear us apart.
But we say what we must, and leave the rest to silence;
we always were comfortable in our quiet adorations of one another.
...and I would like to slide over this silence now, for one last thought.
You must know that I didn't want to lie to you anymore,
that I lie to myself in this facade of an absolute disregard for ourpast,
that you are the subject of so many poems you have not read,
that I have kept all too long a nightmaresque secret to counter yet thrive upon
all the dreams I've had of you...
all the dreams I've not softly described to your still-sleeping eyes and waking ears,
my whisper your alarm clock.
I don't want to kill what we've become
but I have to attempt to resurrect what we once were.
This is a matter of dishonesty and regret
burdening my aging well-being. Am I selfish, then?
Of pulling myself up by my bootstraps and living out my Carpe Diem O.C.D.A.D.D.D.**
and reminding you of how we once defined "True Love."

Chapter Four: Let's Be Nostalgic And Question How We Arrived at Here And Now....

_I gave you petrified flowers wrapped in a blue composition notebook.
You placed a pressed flower, tiny and lavender, back in that notebook.
After years.
_________After memories.
_____________________After love.
_____________________________After we stopped being an us.
And for the stupidest moment, I had thought you were reaching for
a distant me as the flower's petals uselessly reached for the distant corners of its page.
_Earlier some evening, I gave you my company.
I stood next to you glancing when I felt like it and dancing because you wouldn't.
Later some evening, you gave me your company.
You slept next to me, slight feminine breaths that slid me into my own sleep
when I was satisfied with the delusion that

you were dreaming of me.

The first time we slept in the same bed in 5 years.
_Late at night and out with friends, you handed me a pin that read "I am loved". You said you had found it on the ground and that-out of everyone you knew-I would appreciate it the most. "Merry Christmas."
"Thank you, Atheist."
"I am loved." I am loved. I was loved.

Chapter Five: Let's Write Our Serendipitous 'Coinkidink'....

I read to you on the subway.
"...I'm thinking of Anna, I would give everything never to think about her again."***
And of all the books, in all the chapters, across all the pages I could have read,
"I need to see her again, I couldn't explain my need to myself."
these pages sing of this budding relationship, this flowering togethering,
this best kind of love--the only true love of young love: first love.
This fictional account of a wonderful once-us.
"and that's why it was such a beautiful need."
Not knowing why you are my beautiful need.
"The harder I tried not to think about her, the more I thought about her."
Another writer articulating what I thought when I was 15.
What I think now.
"I wanted to call her name, but I didn't want her to hear my voice."
And though you say you don't like it when I touch your red curling hair,
"I wanted to touch her hair."
And as he writes one way of the infinite right, saying what I can't,
I do not anticipate that you'll quote
"That explains why...you weren't at your house."
(I anticipate...[take a breath] a pause.)

Chapter Six: Let's Remember The Nights' Happenings Remembered....

When we were together, I didn't have to tell you I had dreamt of you because you already knew.
_I once dreamt that you had written something
in your curly cursive longhand over a printed shorthand paper, sitting close but across from me at a table. I tried to read it and could only make out
'Rick' and 'I am'
the latter bold and your hands taking mine as I turned the paper and you closer.
_I once dreamt we laid on the couch of my mother's living room, I facing the t.v. and you away, our bare feet in one another's smiling faces.
I murmured and motioned that you turn so that I could hold you. Still smiling, paralleling then.
_I once dreamt I stood in a foreign doorway on a Shakespearean summer day after having read you this poem. You walked up my stone path, your head down and smirking. You walked up to my squint and confusion, wrapped your arms around my neck and kissed me simply and slowly, and grinned at my shock that this should be your long awaited response to this
______________________________________________________droning confession.
_I once dreamt that we're always holding hands, walking through a Gondry**** meadow or going to a Yanni concert.

Chapter Seven: Let's Transcribe A Realistic Epilogue to A Dramatic Evening....

So I read this to you nights before I left the city,
two nights before I left the city, waiting for a time that would not ruin my time there
but would give us at least twentyfour hours of ecstasy should you respond against me.
You had just come out of a shower, and had you sat closer, you would have
dripped cleanliness and tears onto the pages upon which I wrote the poem.
But you didn't drip, and you didn't cry, and you didn't respond. You paused.
Like I knew you would. Like I know you.
"Well, I'll walk you downstairs." An avoidance uttered with the utmost quietude and confidence.
"No, please--the doors fine." I can't tell you how many cracks were in the 3 steps of my voice.
And at the door, our heads dangling from our shoulders for different reasons,
you opened your arms and I kicked the cat and we said
_"C'mere..."
"Yo-you really shouldn't do this....
I'm sorry"
I tried to bend my neck and crouch my towering to breathe in the crook of your neck and hair.
_"I'm so sorry"
apologizing for the reality that I had just revealed and the embrace we didn't deserve.
I didn't cry and neither did you, but I sounded like it and you didn't and I said one final
"Bye." silently.
With Holocaust-knees*****, morphined hands, breathing the depths of a puddle, and my beating
beating heart, I thought I knew that this is anxiety at Love's feet.

Chapter Eight: Let's Realize That Our Conversation-Chemistry is Dwindling....

You texted me. It's an interesting means of communication by which no matter whether or not I respond, I can't avoid reading what my screen presented. I open my phone and there are the words. It's not like a call where I can avoid your sounds, your words, your breathing, your existence.
_"Rick are you okay?"
"Just in a state of shock. i've wanted to tell you for so long, and it's such a relief you finally know."
_"I knew i just didn't know what to say"
"How long have you known or suspected? p.s.: i told you the japanese wouldn't do: i'm hungry as all hell."
We went out for Japanese for my birthday because it was close and I was there and, having held hands for the first time my night six years earlier, I had hoped you wouldn't forget my birthday.
I mentioned it in the text to break the bleakness of our dialogue and to sneer. You chose to write back "Well at least it was free :)"
Days later, on that day, you didn't call but--again--texted
_"Hey mister happy birthday!!!" each exclamation point a sock to my jewels.
"My birthday is the least of my concerns. there are much more significant matters to discuss between us for now. i'll wait for you to formulate your thoughts and call me later."
Then later came.
_"I'm sorry about how i responded to your wishing me a happy birthday. i just haven't been feeling well since i got back and i miss you terribly.
it was wrong of me to be so accusatory, but this post-monday, pre-discussion timeframe is a dreadful limbo for me.
sleep well now."
You called weeks later, we spoke for an hour, and you hung up with a twinkle in your step and I a limp.

Chapter Nine: An Attempt at A Reasonable And Distant Denouement....

And if you had to know about any of the poems about you that you haven't read, or about how I'm feeling, you should know that I know that I think:
"Who Knows What Chance Will Bring and Who Will Sing and Who Will Dance?"
And that the incredulity of my futile fidelity is nothing more than my despaired romancticism.
So I took the only two photos of you I have and wedged them within the words of this poem's second draft. On the back of each smiling you, I wrote "I have to let go."
Those photos saved me one dramatic night in Iceland, but I have since forgotten them.
I have also since forgotten connecting to Lara's****** words: "Why don't you fucking love me?"
And have since forgotten loving you.

Much to your delight, I'm sure.


Chapter Ten: Notes And Citations Extensive Enough to Pay Homage to Eliot And Wallace....

* "American Beauty"--> "Spectacular" film; scene where Lester realizes his lusts for his daughter's friend and his apathy to the potential consequences of pursuing her
** Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Attention Deficit Disorder Disorder (two ubiquitous disorders put together fictitiously)
*** text quoted from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
**** Michel Gondry, Surrealist artist and media director/ writer
***** Photographs of Holocaust victims, emaciated, with frail, shaking knees
******Lara is an Icelandic singer. Beautiful voice, sung in English and Icelandic; collaborated with Damien Rice on one song from "[Th]ogn"