rosemary brown park in february

i stop and sit and smoke in the park by my house on sunday
the packed snow brings my feet up high, close to the bench, and i rest on my knees
and i stare across at mclynn and this t-rex spring rider stares back
i stay there in the cold for what felt like hours (probably closer to 20 minutes.)

i go home and get nothing done and i cancel my plans. everyone is in a bad mood.
and i decide to shovel your driveway and clean up your bedroom for you
knowing the less you have to do the more time i get to spend with you
the two of us sit in my bedroom and play mario kart. it cheers you up.

monday you apologize for treating me like we're dating.
you call to invite me over when you're going to bed just to see me
and we talk about the future. what we want. i know i can cope if it doesn't turn out my way 
but right now my feelings are strong and all-encompassing.

when i write like this i want the last paragraph to be some kind of wrap-up, 
a conclusion of the message i'm conveying, a sense of closure in the lines
i'll restate my points, contextualize them—i'll give meaning to my experiences—
but i don't know how i'm supposed to do that right now.

i cannot describe or understand the person i am anymore without yearning
not as a romantic ideal or an abstract concept but as an actual physical hole in me.
i'm stuck with this lingering sense that something is missing, that there is something i lack
but i don't even know what that might be or where i should go looking for it
and so i turn inside myself and try to refine the person that i am
i no longer feel my past chase and weigh me down but i worry about the future
recognizing the mistakes i have made has made me a better person
but
nothing i can do right now will get me what i want
i turn inside myself and i daven to G-d that everything will turn out alright
i close my eyes and recite the ancient words which for a moment keep me together
i stand and i shuckle until the kesher of my shel rosh gets tangled in my ponytail
and so when i remove it my hair is frizzy and sticks up in all directions
like bedhead, as though i was making love to the aibeshter. (a sick sense of prayer.)

and even in this moment i have a twisted idea of intimacy
i'm reminded of the mere concept and instinctively shut it down.

nothing i can do right now will get me what i want
in my head i imagine i can focus on my studies and drown everything else out
but then i take an extra vyvanse and just stare at my computer screen for hours
i am not capable of focusing let alone drowning out what calls to me
in my free time i daydream about what our apartment might look like
as though us being in a relationship once again is already a given
i get distracted looking at apartments. i scroll through marketplace for hours
i fantasize about running away sometimes. a lot of the time, actually. 
but
nothing i can do right now will get me what i want
and right now i'm working on accepting that.

holding on

what a thing to intertwine your life with another person

when i miss you, i forget about all the problems we had

i still find pieces of toothpicks around my apartment

and for a moment it actually makes me happy