B80
Public Record
Excerpt from novel: with Abandon

steadily dribbling down chain-link gutters

monday morning i’m all alone watching
dribblets tap and crawl across window screens
and wind-worn mothwings
flailing in the rain.

We are no longer
because We is now You and i,
but i haven’t told You that yet
and therefore You haven’t yet said no, please, we don’t have to
and i haven’t yet said yes, we do.
We two are each separate;
we each are too separate.

i love you alone and i hope for you
all that is kindly and calm.
i hope for you love
better than i could give

i hope that you miss how much i loved you;
deeply in the marrow
and all throughout your spinal column.
maybe someday we can be conjoined through our two
consummate pains, lovely & lovingly;
you and me can be we again then,
but a different brand
more familial, more like
twins conjoined at the hurt.

but for now we should be
only you, only me.
for now we should each be
achingly loveless.

Frida Bilson