Internal Rhythm

1.

His knuckles have gotten thicker
He's learned to turn his voice to silk
   to convince and to caress
He has finally learned how to kiss
and how to cook asparagus
and how to contain his rage in public

He squares himself into computer columns
by day
but at night he dreams of the ocean
He becomes dark, cool, wild
responding to an unpredictable tug
from every direction

In his dreams he swells
and recedes
but not like clockwork
never like clockwork.

2.

She wakes up at precisely 7:59 AM
having set her alarm for 8 AM
She rolls over in the early gray light
and looks at the glowing red numbers,
then smacks the clock with her palm
before it can begin to squeal.

There must be a rhythm within her
that is willing to align itself to the gears of a clock
some silent internal tick-tock
that builds upon itself
and counts her body's beats
and knows the precise hour
even as she sleeps

that same inner rhythm
heavy with its tally of time
must also know
in addition to when, precisely, to wake up
when, precisely, it will stop for good.

3.

The years keep passing
This is the only thing he can say with certainty
since every time he looks back
his stories seem to retell themselves

Is he in the right line of work?
Has he been kind enough?
Would everything be better, if, say,
he had lost his virginity
to a different woman?

Better not to think about it
These questions with no answers
But at precisely 3:28AM
he is staring at an infinitely dark ceiling
and he cannot think of anything else.

4.

The morning is sunny.
She sits on a soft leather couch
with red-gold embroidery
She is sipping green tea
from a round white cup.

She can imagine this as a memory-
impossibly clean, luxurious-

When she is looking back someday,
when the world has gone mostly
in flames
and she is huddling
in ashes, maybe
or under the black hulk of a tree

It will have come
quite abruptly
a sudden rush of hot air
the windows shaking,
her voice,
as if it were a thing separate from her
rising in a scream.

5.

He scribbles on a napkin:
There's not doom
Or hope
But a relentless working of things
and a rhythm
that has never yet been disproven
He is drunk at a bar
as if he has always been drunk at a bar
It is dimly lit
as if the world were never bright
His stomach was once soft
now hard
someday soft again
He can't ignore this.

She is glorious. More
every year
Someday
less so.
Outside,
it's cold and dark.
He dreams of her, forgets her again,
likes to dream of her when things are difficult.

He gets up from the bar.
Time begins again.

6.

She has become a connoiseur
of mid-seasons-

Late-late winter's almost invisible buds
Early-early summer's particular shade of yellow green
Mid autumn, a held breath

As a child she didn't understand the romance of seasons
the piles of poems about fall leaves
the hubbub about daffodils and robins
all the songs of summer sun

But after a few dozen sets of seasons,
she understands:
how grateful we are
and how full of sorrow
that every year,
no matter what,
autumn comes again

7.

At some point, they stopped calling it
goodbye.
The years rolled in and out,
the seasons flowed sweet and bitter
they both stopped getting taller
early on
He dated a series of foolish and wonderful girls
She put on her backpack and didn't come back
for  a while

They talked on the phone
in moments of heartbreak and nirvana
He described in detail
the patterned chemical response
of our habitual emotions
She told him that she danced under the moon
She slept in his bed when she visited
His girlfriend didn't care for her after that.

He showed up at her house 3000 miles away,
set up his pup tent in the yard
befriended her boyfriend
Was waiting there for her
when she got home.
He photographed her like no one else:
she looked more like herself in his photos

Maybe, he told her,
because he saw her so rarely
he could see her simply as she was.
Or maybe, she answered,
because he saw her so rarely
he could see her only as he imagined her to be.

8.

She: surprised at the new thickness of his shoulders
and the familiar delicate slope of his father's nose
his new grad student glasses,
but those same favorite blue sneakers
He: shocked all over again by her beauty,
the frame of her new haircut
her sparkling earrings
the new smile lines curving away from her eyes
tying together
a portrait that is almost unbearable

How they had shrunk in each other's mind
to the last clear image
a halo of sun
a pair of knit eyebrows
a pair of feet dangling off a dock

he sits beside her
he says he thinks clearer when they talk
"You might think I sound crazy,
but you should hear me when I'm not talking to you."

he asks if she thinks of him
and where he fits into the rhythm of her life
he says he thinks of her
wishes for her to bring some chaos into his logicked world
he says he just wants time with her
fifty days on a desert island

she reminds him that they're both in love with other people
that they live 3000 miles apart
that the rhythm of their lives
has never carried them together for very long
before tugging them apart again

she says the time is not right
and the time has never been right
and maybe the time will never be right.

he doesn't know
that she has just had to catch her heart like a balloon
by the string and tug it
hand over hand
back to earth

9.

He was once a connoiseur of wildness
Coke on the beach in Mexico
The dark thighs of strange women
Piercing, reckless love letters
Sometimes addressed to her

He was once a force of nature
Broader than a hurricane
Lashed to a pier
Set to destroy himself

She was there for all of that
Lay in the back of his huge Suburban on an old sleeping bag
when they skipped class together
he drew demons
sang his good songs
she read Revelations
and laughed and gasped

He was intuitive, frightening sometimes
had a good goatee, even at seventeen.
He can't find songs to sing now
But he writes lengthy papers
His head is so rich with thought
He is paralyzed in his armchair.

10.

She scribbles in a small book
It's undeniable.
You can't turn summer back into spring
or winter into autumn.
Birds don't turn back mid-migration.
Love doesn't back up and take a different turn this time.

She is on top of a white mesa
as if she has always been on top of a white mesa
The sun is blazing
as if the world has never been dark.
Her hair was once short
now long
someday silver
She can't ignore this.

He is brilliant. More
every year
Someday
less so.
The gypsum crunches underfoot
She dreams of him, forgets him again,
likes to dream of him when things are complicated.

She gets up from the shade.
Time begins again.

11.

He dreamed of conquering the world.
He told her his plan. He would
arrange everything.
But when he was in charge
He would be at risk of getting bored
So she would have to be there too.

She said she didn't want to rule the world.
He said then, of course, he would have to enslave her,
Make her play war games,
Keep him on his toes.
She said that she wouldn't play.

He holds her on the afternoon of his wedding
in the doorway of his bedroom
in a tall white beachhouse
She is trembling, about to spill over.
He uses his thumbs to wipe the tears from her eyes.
Once, he held her in a white nightgown
She was brimming
one shift of his hand
she would have melted into him

She has just watched him marry someone else.
Now he is holding her like this,
wiping her tears away like that.
One shift of his hand.

She stares straight into him
Her eyes big round mirrors
His new wife steps into the room.

12.

She was awake all night
with the moon blaring through her window
Pipe down, she wanted to say.

What if she had gone with him?
Or for that matter, with the puppeteer,
the bilingual breakdancer,
or the Maltese diplomat?
What wildness,
what infinite hallways of doors
what weeks wiled away on desert islands?
Did she have a finite amount of love and time
and could it only be apportioned
like slices of pie?

Better not to think about it
Those questions with no answers
But at precisely 12:08 AM
she was staring at an endlessly bright moon
and she couldn't think of anything else.

13.

He woke up lost.
What time is it, he wanted to say
And for an instant, couldn't place the month
The season
The time of year
His age
All of it lost in the filmy gray
between sleep and awake
He could have been any age
Thirteen and in love for the first time
Seventy-five and in love for the last
His back still aching
His eyes sandy.

He blinked.
A stunning woman there next to him
Soft, yielding, curled in the quiet kiss of sleep
Sunshine hair spilled out across the pillow

How did he get there?
Did he do something wrong?
Did he do something very right?

This was his wife.
More cream and more silk
than he could have dreamed
as a teenager
when he wondered,
which of the three girls he had a crush on
he would marry

He brushed a hair from his wife's forehead
All those years, he was talking about her
Wondering about her
And they were hurtling towards each other
Through time and space
Without either of them knowing it.

14.

She was once small.
Her fingers were tattooed with marker ink
Her voice was a giggle
Happy to be seven, then to be ten
Hating olives
Given to fits of rage
That would drift out to sea
and vanish

She never dreamed of marriage
Of being a white princess,
But now there's a tiny diamond on her finger
And she has just cut her bangs.
Doors have opened
And she has walked through them
Again and again
Until she got here.

She cannot doubt now
Every past version of herself
Who looked at each of those doors
Then said,
"Yes, this is the one"
And walked through.