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Just because I like to know who's reading.

--

You say "love is a dog from hell,"
like you wrote that for the first time,
& supposedly home is where the heart is
& hell is other people,
but sadness is the absence of God
(or the starvation of the soul?), and
so love is His or Her or Its presence?
You speak in these similes & exclamation points,
these hyperbole & fragments,
& I have no ideas anymore
on how to translate your meaning
into my meaning.

I don't know how to read you.

I create my own tools to create meaning.
I take scissors & glue & paste &
try to make a text in your language.

I read the lines of your face &
I gauge my successes and my failures.

I don't know how to speak to you!

& if I break it down to this:
your subject, your predicate,
your verbs to give action
& us to receive it,
no matter how many times I proofread
or take notes in our margin,
it just doesn't make sense.

& if you told me that we aren't wire
& streams of consciousness
volleyed & slammed back and forth
into each other's skulls,
you know, just for emphasis,
I'd say you were a liar.

I pick up the pieces.
But no matter how many times
I try to piece together the subject,
the predicate, the adverbs,
the notes scrawled into margins,
our margins, & on bathroom walls,
it never translates. It never makes sense.

I don't know how to read you.