with bump & grind bass lines and dancing dudes in harmony
serenading in the rain or inside a car heading to a house party
and there are always choreographed men melodiously singing
underneath manufactured precipitation during music videos
as lyrics evolve into questions of staying or going, answers
of lusting or listening, or cycles of begging please for chances
to upcycle pleas into pleasure. Each refrain outlines things
too precious to be willingly given up to the familiar charade
of love. Like a one-hit wonder hustling for years to become
a celebrity overnight, I have paid my dues in this dead-end
job, drowning my desires long ago in a sea of millions, still
wearing wet clothes & holding freshly bought apology roses
blanket-wrapped with tissue paper & I have emerged from
this synthetic euphoria we label as love thoroughly soaked,
with a heart rotting at its edges & speaking of the heart,
I want most what it wants until it decides what it wants
is not meant to be. Sometimes, sex becomes a weapon
& then not. Or a mirror, wherein I reflect on my faults
next to someone else who appears flawless & then not.
I am yammering on about the inevitability of a breakup—
how a door gets deadbolted one night & you never hear
their key lovingly unlock it again. The coffee mug left
behind with a partner’s indelible lipstick stains on its rim
& the stolen smile gone missing after the first argument
that first evening in the first shared apartment & all the
strings of memory braided to craft a leash that tethers me
to the misery of the past. What I meant to mention about
perfectly coifed ’90s guys and their synchronized gyrations
in the drizzle is that love taunts me with a redemption
I cannot touch or teach, while it shows me what sins
water can rinse away & what of myself I might witness
in the wake of that cleansing. Redemption, like a woman
pulling her hair back into a makeshift ponytail, ready to fight
for a lowlife who is not worth fighting for. Redemption,
that lady later wandering into the arms of another, who
rescues her from a home ransacked by a man’s temper.
Redemption, the city tracing its cold & ample indifference
over my skin in the way only a city can when it opens itself
like a wound & waits for darkness to pour into the exposed
cut & I, too, wait for the night to spill itself into echoing
terraces & call me outside into the storm to confess it is
almost my turn. It is almost the season of my favorite
ballad on repeat & its burial ground of lifeless passion
resurrected by a catchy and exploding rhythm & how
all those ooh baby, yeah ad-libs exist for me & no one
else until the song slowly fades out to silence, again.
