for Chen, for Anya I'm tired of my friends collecting, coupled & not calling me anymore to get french fries. I'm tired of curled fingers on old telephone cords, people I used to sit on the floor with no longer around, conversations stiff, pelvis wrapping in legs. queers mass shot in a nightclub & none of them show up with pickles, mail me a fruit basket, or a yo-yo. I think straight people believe, I mean really believe that their partners become the only friends they ever need. I think queer people mimic the straights so they don't become stuck in a fog storm, no flashlights to illuminate beyond their front windshields. Maybe friendship is incessant games of hungry-hungry-hippos, vary in how many pellets we get but all spit up what we can to help each other from starving. Maybe I'm tired of losing those I once held under unwashed sheets, I think friendship is supposed to be love unabound & without paint on the walls. I'd tell my man I'll see him next week after margaritas & a crying session with Mia across the street, I'm desperate for no one held up with arm floaties, I want us bottom sunk where the chlorine is thick. I'm bored with friends I stop hearing from until they've broken up, I'm out flying kites for every one of their dumped-ass-crying phonecalls. I'm eating bokchoy at the farmers market. I smile with so much green in my teeth.

Maybe love is saying Kierkegaard to the right wind. Maybe love is a mushroom the babushka plops in her basket right before the sun plops the earth in its mouth. Maybe love is saying Nietzsche to the wrong cloud. Maybe love is knowing when to jet & when to jettison. Love could very well be spelunking. Love, a cave & you've forgotten your wellies. Is your love primarily citrus or leather? Is my love plain cheese or overly pepperoni? Björk is definitely love. My grandmother's love is three rotund Buddhas on a sacred kitchen shelf. Or it's the high-speed Internet she got for Christmas. Maybe love is not seeing any contradiction. Maybe love is seeing every contradiction as a sideways swan dress of a connection. Maybe love is trying to dismantle capitalism as a radical leftist, while keeping grandmother happy as a PhD candidate. Maybe love is dreaming of a vibrator that works equally well for all the people. Maybe love is people, vibrating. Maybe I'm just trying to write a really good doing-it song, & failing. But in that failing is something funky, maybe worthy. Most likely, Kierkegaard making out with Nietzsche, while the sun sets slow in Vienna is a lyric I'm still working on.