gaps for the universe to leak through

He hasn't responded, and I imagine him building a boat to the moon. I don't know where he is or what he's doing, only that an hour ago he was telling me how much he missed my voice and my hands in his hair. I miss his hair, which is soft and gold like the stars. I imagine him in an ark high in the sky, sailing along the milky way. His hair will be ruffled with the wind--they say there's no breeze in space, that a man's footprint stays etched on the moon for forever, or that a flag remains frozen mid-air for eternity--but I know that space is forever in motion. Nebula breathe in and out, pulsating against spinning stars and infinitely expanding dimensions. Space is a never-ending dream, and his boat is another spiraling star in the swath of the universe.

He'll land on the moon quickly enough, because he's strong and brave. He'll call to me from atop a sandy crater, his words whistling through space and time to reach my ear--I miss you, please come to me. And I will; I'll take a running leap into the sea, finding a spinning sky instead of icy waves. From the moon will spin a rope of golden thread, and I'll grab for it, holding tightly as he pulls me to him. I'll see his figure, he'll grow closer, his hair shinning among the stars. There's his boat! It's beautiful, made of wood from the deepest forests of the Earth, with gaps between the boards to let the universe leak in. The masts spiral away into infinity and the crow's nest is buried far away in distant nebula. I ache to climb the ropes and peer out over the whole universe.

He's built a boat to the moon, and he's going to call for me soon. I miss you, he'll say, please come to me. And I'll take a running leap into the sea, spin into the sky, and he'll pull me to the moon.

and I wonder oftentimes now
when those around me first fell in love
or if they've ever been in love at all.
whom did they love?
or perhaps not whom, but what?

for me it was when I was seven and building castles
I was in love for a moment, just a moment,
when he laughed against my lips and said, "you're still building castles."
I've never been in love with anyone but a dream
but I have always, and will always
love
     love

Love, more than any other emotion, makes a person feel like she's on top of the world. But is love an emotion? If so, it would intangible, a thing unfit to be a noun. You can't hold love in your hand. At least, humanity has the conception that emotions are immaterial. But when I think of anger, sadness, heartbreak, love...I can feel them cupped in my hands, with all their definitive qualities. Sadness is heavy; heartbreak is watery eyes that see too much and are crusty at the lids. Anger is something fleeting, cat-like, but more like a kitten than an elderly maiden. Love is something else. Love gets into you, overtakes you, until you overtake everything else with your love.

Love for another is perhaps the strongest or most palpable form of love. A human is not an inanimate object that accepts and reflects love no matter the case. A human chooses to love you, or perhaps loves you so wildly that he looses all control and cannot choose anything except to know that he loves you. I will speak of love between men and women, because this is all I have experienced. That a man will take the time to speak to you, to court you, to kiss your forehead and stroke your hair when you are hurt, is a sign that you are loved. Many of us deny love or remain skeptical of it because of these signs. When they are gone, we reflect and believe ourselves to have sought worth from another's attention. Through this, we've lost worth through self. But having another love you isn't devaluing the love you have for yourself, but adding to it. Another's love a gift to yourself. It's a challenge to love in return.

I have never been loved by a man, and I have never loved a man. I've perhaps never had a relationship either, although I've been involved with a man (boy?). His simple affections gave me a feeling of joy and exhilaration previously unknown to me in such quantities. I had experienced the same through my love for nature--atop mountains and in dark copses of trees--but I had never felt such affection or attentions from a man.

Love. I can feel it. I've felt love from God and from nature (although they are one in the same). I've felt a degree of love from a man, although we were not in love with each other. Perhaps one of the gifts of humans is to show love even when we do not fully love each other. Perhaps one of humanity's gifts is that we are always in love.

I felt once, when I was younger, that I loved everything and hated nothing. I did not like anything, but love to varying degrees. This didn't lessen the power of love, but strengthened it because the love was everywhere and constant. I grew older, met a man, became involved, and fell out of love with love as I fell more in love with him. I forgot that perhaps I was allowed to love him, softly, not in the traditional sense acknowledged by society, but in a way that was a soft blip on a monitor but still palpable.

So let us say that I did love him, and do still love him because I once did. I measure that love in forehead kisses, in glances sent before orgasms, in afternoons naps curled around each other, in awkward silences, in hands stroking hair. I cup this love in my hands, aware that it is not full love or true love, but a watery form of what is still...love. Love, seen in affections straight from my heart. I gave bits of myself to him, and he to me. We gave each other love, although we were never in love.

Love makes you feel special. We deny it because there is the inevitable downfall. Time continues, and humans drift into different phases of love. Perhaps we never stop loving, although perhaps we were never in love in the first place. Perhaps the idea of being in love is merely a dream. Perhaps love is the only reality--love and the varying degrees we feel compelled to give.

Despite these levels of love, I still am unable to say, "I love you, _______." Because that means something different too. I have love for you. I have shown love to you. You have pulled love from me. I may even love you. But I do not, "I love you, _______." We haven't shown each other enough love for that yet.

And so this becomes an ode to literature, or rather language, and the power of words to explain what we feel.

Feeling. Emotion. And who is to say this emotion not palpable and real, simply because we can not see it cupped in our hands? I can feel it. I can feel the warmth of breath against my neck and soft kisses and fevered sex. I can feel love in my hands. It is real.

Is it ephemeral? Have I really lost my belief in love? Or am I finding it again, stronger than ever? (And why is it that I only believe in love when I am not with a man? But being in love with love makes me want love again, makes me want to find a man to whom I may give this love. Is that the true meaning of love? We all have love inside of us, and we find different channels for it? When I am with a man, my love is for him. When I drift from this man, I return to loving love, or words, or trees, or God. To giving all my love to them. For leaving love with memories of this man. What is love? Is love real? Why have we construed love to mean so many things? But I can feel it. I can feel love cupped in my palms. I decided once that love is God. I believe it again; I want it to be so. God is within us, and we give love to others while keeping it for ourselves. Love and God is universal. We take it and give it as we are able. Oh, I want for them to be the same, but oh how it requires thought. I can't feel it fully as I once did, when I knew they were the same. Why has the faith left me?)

I can feel love in my palms. Warm. Light. Like soft kisses and wind whispering through the trees.

"Poem Rocket" Allen Ginsberg

I write you a poem long ago
already my feet are washed in death
Here I am naked without identity
with no more body than the fine black tracery of pen mark on soft paper

and leave all other questions unfinished for the moment to turn back to sleep in my dark bed on earth

"Poem Rocket" Allen Ginsberg

Mr. Snufflebottoms was tired from translating German for five hours straight, especially considering that did not know German, save a few elementary words that coincided with the English forms of "the" and "a" and "to be." Mr. Snufflebottoms liked to pretend that he knew German, but he also like to pretend that he knew a lot of things.

Mr. Snufflebottoms had a twenty-two year old son he hadn't seen in five years. Work at sixteen, out of the house by seventeen! Mr. Snufflebottoms always said. It was something he had heard in college, laughed over at the time, and deemed downright genius by the time his son had hit his teens. Children were incurable, Mr. Snufflebottoms knew, and they had to become adults before they could know anything. His son, Joshua Snufflebottoms, had his first job as a gardener, which was to say that he carried bags of mulch to soccer mom's minivans and mowed the lawn at the garden center. He attended community college, paying his way with his gardener's job and weekend beggary, and he lived with his girlfriend in her parent's house. Luckily, his girlfriend's parents liked Joshua, and although they did not consider him a son, per say, they did feed him peanut butter rice cakes and allow him to mow their lawn. He always does such a nice job, they'd tell their guests at dinner parties. See how beautifully he trimmed the edges by the south wall?

Joshua spoke German fluently, as he had been brought up by a German nanny who wore white aprons and black shoes that sounded like gunfire when she walked. Joshua hadn't seen his nanny since moving out of his father's house, but she still sent him cards for Nikolaustag, which had always been his favorite holiday. For thirteen years, he'd place his left tennis shoe outside his bedroom door and awake to find it filled with treats and toys left by St. Nicholas.

Mr. Snufflebottoms had spent his afternoon translating German exactly because of this German nanny. Mr. Snufflebottoms had developed something of an infatuation throughout the years of her service, especially now that Joshua had moved away and his wife had left him. His wife had actually left within the third year of Joshua's life, but Mr. Snufflebottoms didn't pay attention to these things. He had more important matters to concentrate on, such as translating thick books of German.

He had bought this particular text from a small second-hand bookstore at a "reduced" price. Mr. Snufflebottoms had told the store clerk that he spoke German fluently and was planning a trip to Germany to marry his German lover. The clerk had not contradicted him. Mr. Snufflebottoms, although having translated this text for five hours, had still not discerned that the work concerned horses, particularly their eating and mating habits.

Mr. Snufflebottoms knew everything, however, so he had nothing to fear. The man would figure it out soon enough.

The German nanny entered the room just as Mr. Snufflebottoms settled fully into his relaxing stupor. This habit meant the loosening of many restraints, such as his waistcoat over the substantial girth of his stomach and the ties of his very wide shoes. Mr. Snufflebottoms had a condition where he lacked a sense of smell. He was never bothered when untying his shoes.

when you want everything, what do you have?

She wanted everything. She wanted to touch the sky, riches, his skin, a dove's feathers, smooth metal, and countless crystals. She wanted to see the world, to breathe air by a volcano, to move her toes through sand of a different color, and to laugh under the shade of a rain forest. She wanted him and him and him. She wanted a lot of boys, and she didn't care if she wanted them at the same time. She wanted him because it reminded her of the first him, and she wanted him because he had hair like gold and a smile fit to break windows. She wanted to smash things. She wanted to run into an old factory and smash every old window in the building, and she wanted to scream as she did so. She wanted to watch the glass fall pitter patter to the ground through the silent air as mouth screamed wordlessly. She wanted silence. She wanted deafening noise. She wanted to be music, to have lyrics running through her skin and harmonies tangled in her hair. She wanted hair down to her waist so she could shave it all off one day and understand the meaning of loss. She wanted the world to be green and beautiful forever. She wanted to know the meaning of perfection and understand the truths of the world. She wanted to know why she was alive and what her purpose was as a human, as a creature, as a soul. She wanted to meet her soul, and she wanted to drink tea with it in Italy and bring it into the future laughing. She wanted to love. She wanted a rabbit to feed and watch wriggle his nose. She wanted to be a bird, or a leopard, and she wanted to run faster or fly more freely than anything else in the world.