In Absentia
by Brian Czyzyk
I.
January: the world unbroken white.
Iced-over road in a city cleaved
by a shit-brown river. That path to you.
I came with brownie mix and cocoa,
trying to sweeten the distance
between us. Salt in my bootsoles.
Your green door. Inside, we were
red-sweatered, couched, thumbing
each other’s knuckles. All the while
I was trying to tell you I had
never been touched that way before.
Lights off. Candle lit. Your face spliced
by shadow and orange light. We
held each other there. Nothing
more—what I wanted and what I saw
as the first step toward my history
splayed like a monarch under glass.
II.
What does it mean when I say I started
to picture the ending after the first date?
It means I need to stop believing in my kinship
with every cow I pass on the highway. It means
I should have recognized there was never a bouquet
addressed with my name waiting on your kitchen table.
I shouldn’t pay attention to the Netflix “recommended”
list. I don’t need to watch rom-coms. If I want to laugh
at the stupid things people do for love,
I can look at my bookshelf and the card
pressed between the pages of the novel I bought
for you. I guess love for me is so much wishful thinking,
so many hours wasted pacing the floor and waiting
for my phone to chime. Truth is, I never trust
that anybody wants me. That’s why I’m a willing victim
for men to stretch on tenterhooks—I’d butcher myself
to pieces if anybody asked. I dissolve with the Lysol
and slick myself across Formica countertop, linoleum
tile, knot myself into whatever rag covers your palm
and learns the ferocity with which you attack dirt.
III.
No. I refuse to lick myself sick
over you. I refuse to be a tree
that breaks into blossom under
your touch. If you want to compare
love to pain, you need to understand
that every tulip is first a shut mouth,
a closed rose still bears its thorns.
What I mean when I say I want
my history splayed is that
I want to tell you how I used to scrawl
across the bodies of my father’s guitars
in crayon just so he would face me.
When a school friend left my lunch table
to sit with the choir kids, he might
as well have punched me in the gut.
No. I won’t stake myself outside
your window, howling and scratching
my ears to blood. I refuse
to be shattered by cold. To let this
place I’m trying to call home be distorted
by you. Last month, I skirted the riverbank.
It reeked like a Porta-John, but I watched
as a duck swam past, her feet beating
haloes that frothed against the shore.