a description...

A description to ring your bell tower: Chelsea

Since you were not going to die that night, Chelsea,
casually, in Tucson, Arizona, though you said it might happen—
that night of six and a half valium,
I thought it appropriate to tell you—I felt in love some,
then many times pushed out—tired, breathing.

All night up drunk and talking, Chelsea,
while you were turning your head around things.
While you spoke to yourself like a used car—but they've stolen my things, you say,
I've mistrusted my own eyes, my own dying—

The hotel rooms, West Texas, your mother,
art books on the kitchen counter, the dishes left un-rinsed,
or a drive across the bridge, a drunken parentheses,
love’s description written as if it were an address, as if we could send ourselves away
like that.

On the back of a tea-stained postcard…

look at me quickly now, Chelsea, quickly now, the postage is at our backs—

send me that yellowed Polaroid, Motel Six— fold me back against the creases—

give me each one of your limbs, Chelsea
lay them out flat as a sheet if you’re hungry,

Here then, Chelsea, take this bread, Chelsea,
take this soaked-in-lime apology,

lend me some lungs to fill with blood, and lend me your hands to hold—
your hands to assure my hands, hold me, these curling edges,
and forgive me,
emptied out in cigar-smoke, leaves.