Can you take three more?
If there what?
What was that?
If they're less than 10 pages each, right?
Last sip of water.
I have to end soon.
This is the first poem I wrote in this exchange with Laura.
It wasn't written to her.
It was written to a person by the mysterious initial of A,
who appears often in my poems of the last two years.
It's called The Recognition.
Pulling myself up to surface shimmer
in the tonality of how you set a mood.
It's so casual when we sit with our drinks
as if we were finally grown ups. Your story
told always in context of Turkish cigarettes.
So white, smooth, clean.
As though bravery didn't enter into it
is what I can't get used to.
Want a nail to rip your shirt?
No, not something mean.
But the recognition that this weather in bright blue focus
is fickle, dangerous lifting both of us and could change us.
We share this malleable fact and air
when polluted and thick gray forcing cell after cell
to murmur closed down.
When I thought of seeing you, I was wary,
felt warned, noticing the delicate fern near window light
had dried up from lack of water.
Suddenly, every leaf backing off from its original intensity.
Sharp greens muted to loss of pigment.
Old stain on paper.
I thought this time, I did not want
to be the good scotch, the pink pearl eraser acquiescent
to your saying all as well.
All is not well.
I want to take off my clothes and lie on cool sheets with you
and show you my fever.
I want you to look at me and say you're burning up.