My First Love*
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footnoted by the editor
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*who had her own room at my parents house in high school. *who built the bed we would sleep in. *who buried deep under the father’s house. *who I enjoyed sleeping with. *who danced the dinner show. *who liked me single. *who made me speak up. *who wiggled with birdsongs. *who liked to be placed on the bottom. *who painted in tails. *who said “I love you” first. *who kept or laid bare to himself. *who was the under-age one but I still met in a bar. *who passion-fruit lip glossed our kisses. *who had the pug. *who read the paper with me in the diner every weekend. *who spread open like newsprint. *who went away. *who stayed in Chicago. *who read open books. *who tested my patience. *who got me down. *who falls upward bleating gratification. *who had a mental attitude. *who gave me drugs. *who I did not see it. *who drew on his cigarettes. *who filed his papers like a divorce. *the little holes that break. *who stood by the nape of my neck. *who transcended the problem. *who turned fuck-buddy then stopped when he gave me hepatitis. *who gratified the inclination. *who said she always knew. *who cannot rest in honor. *who did not rest. *who I always lied to even when I didn’t. *who painted the foreground. *who staged the shadows watching him. *who tried to recollect the autumn of his freedom. *who wrote songs that blinded him. *who the why in his eyes was drunk. *who didn’t blink, especially when screaming. *who used to say wanna have a rum & coke when he wanted to get fucked. *who always came back. *who said so now what happens? *who folds in the deep whisper of the forest. *who said I was banal and to SAY SOMETHING! *who maybe might make a night and day of it. *who slips from structure and falls flat on the text. *who is a word, if resulting in a barbershop shimmer. *who taught me to turn the light off when I left a room. *who I speak to with all my categories intact. *who had more generous terms. *who suggested what we all know as unfortunate common sense. *who was a violation, a torrent of lilac stupor. *who made me a rum & diet coke. *who I’m ready to believe now. *who is still my family’s favorite. *who was a 1st Edition, only slightly used. *who provoked with the intention of seducing beyond his means. *whose assumption was triumph. *whose gesture amounted to little more than an embrace. *who, as it turns out, never knew anything of the sort. *whose imagination was the core of my desire. *who kissed me cold, which made me hot. *who I cheated on in the same house at the same party where he was cheating on me. *who tucks. *who was a deliberate figure, but to what degree? *who would spank me half-heartedly but only because he loved me. *who claimed his jealousy never hurt another. *who was always a friendly face, except when they weren’t. *who darkened his darkness in all the things but wonder. *whose friendly spies animated and depressed me. *who renounced language after a certain hour. *who rendered Rousseau perfectly. *who never sighed. *who stared with his head on his hands, his elbows on the table. *who blushed his tear half up inside of him. *who has followed, as they say, their dreams. *who starved for objects and home. *who would wear the jockstrap. *who mastered hygiene as a purpose unto itself and told me about it at length. *who had the holes that show. *who wanted to be the wife. *who lived in the land of small flags and no miracles. *who spent hot evenings, on the phone, talking about the weather, because I wanted to hear his voice. *who meant sex. *who would always think that. *who I still see when I make the effort. *who said machines can be beautiful. *who taught me how to put on mascara. *who can’t tell if he’ll win tomorrow. *who understood sentences in the form of a word. *who was all in vain, but actually in vain. *who never would cry. *who had no systems of signs about him. *who subjected the imagination to subjects regarding guilt. *who said, finally, this has to stop. *who did not love me, even when he told me so, and I believed him, even though, now, that time is better left folded up and stuffed in my pocket and not spoken of except in footnotes**
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**and then, only in footnotes.
