1/7 of Love Lilac 

A morning cab was three minutes from dropping 
     off a man, according to most recent text, who’d 
     bought his flight the day prior, rushing
through the period where you wonder, having 
     begun desiring at a distance, whether the 
     person whom you imagine one day loving 
     exists, which one can prolong
productively—so that a bigger fantasy supports 
     you both through early awkwardness, a 
     commitment helpful in ensuring no one ghosts at first fumble—
or unproductively—so that you’ve begun sleeping 
     with a fictional character you hadn’t the energy 
     to write down
—or cut short, either pragmatically (let’s not get 
     carried away) or, here, romantically (I have 
     booked a ticket), though, since the driver might 
     also be the impatient sort of lover, maybe two 
minutes to decide in what state I’d be found, mug 
     holding now rain and coffee, me nestled 
     against the stoop’s hibiscus: should I run 
down the stairs when the car pulls up, I asked God, 

As if He were the helpful if impatient voice of
     reason in Betty Everett’s “The Shoop Shoop 
     Song (It’s in His Kiss),” whose first speaker 
     wants to know if a man loves them, ignoring
     the labial answer, and I love 
when the bad arguments appear with good, which 
     lets us find where love is not: his eyes? (“Oh,
     no, you’ll be deceived,”) face? (“just his 
     charms”)—and you’d be forgiven 
for thinking this means touch, writ large, wins out 
     over sight, in sensory apprehension of love’s 
     truth, but embrace is “just his arms” (not any 
     touch will do: we need the kiss), 
Everett’s question starts with the song’s first note: 

She waivers from that stubborn G, at first, only on 
     the pronouns: “he-e” splits in two, down to F, 
     and “me” sinks two steps down, and squeezing 
     him tight is acceptable 
if paired with the kiss, too— The song is clear!—
     but love asks too many questions, so we must
     move through the way he acts, some silly 
     drums, et al.—performing it
on American Bandstand, Everett asks the first 
     question, but leaves the rest to a chorus she 
     listens to by cupping a hand over her ear, since 
     we all learn to identify love not by kisses but
     by our concurrent response to pop songs

Or a source in a bad high school essay, harnessed 
     to argue sex is learned—a world without nature
     —my faith in change, if mostly arbitrary
shifts (a childhood piano recital, duet, friend in 
     matching dress ascending the keys,
     remembered later, having now heard of sex, in 
     the prints on the robe in Manos: The Hands
of Fate, learning to laugh in time with a girl, 
     creates adult desire for mid-sized fists)
     requiring early apology, when N. helped me 
     understand my sin, that I’d defended 
     conversions, what Adam
Phillips says “change everything by keeping
     everything the same,” if from the gayer side, in 
     arguing for a little bend in heterosexual effort, 
     attempting to find whatever crowbar, to 
     experience what opens 
the mind (he slid As Nature Made Him in my bag 
     to prove we know ourselves, are stuck,
     knowing, as we needed our evidence to be
     accidents, then), and yet I kept arguing 
for taste’s acquisition: would it be so hard to love 
     what you had not yet imagined, be that cunt or 
     fried gizzards or Kelly Reichardt’s Owl or 
     sound synthesis or as yet unrealized
     masculinity, or is that repression, would you
be Swann, who lost his time, whining “To think 
     that I wasted years of my life, that I wanted to 
     die, that I felt my deepest love, for a woman 
     who did not appeal to me, who was not my 
     type. [qui n'était pas mon genre!] 

Or the other end of the line, our lord on 
     speakerphone, trying to get me off, when I say,
     “Say anything, and it will work, I just need the 
     sound of you indicating you want me 
to come” “Anything?” “Try me” “OK, I’ve just 
     fallen off a cliff, one short enough to survive 
     the drop, and you find me . . .” “I find your 
     corpse?” “I said that 
I survive. But my bones are broken. My knee is 
     bent wrong,” “I see” “And I have one last 
     wish” “Yes, tell me what you want” “This is 
     working for you?” “Right now, everything 
works” “My boyfriend calls from Amsterdam, and 
     my ringtone is set to play a stereo pulse width 
     modulated tone, left and right beating, 
     interfering, their timbres slowly shifting —
     from rich double-reedy sounds to flutelike 
     …—
“Fuck. Oh my god” “Yes, a gradual change in 
     modulation index, while he calls” “do I 
     answer?” “Not until the last moment—you let 
     it play” “ …” “You can just listen now. Touch 
     yourself. ‘We have a situation on our hands, 
here’ you say, passing the phone to me, and I ask 
     him for a sequence of primes to translate into a 
     network of frequencies, and he gives it,
he’s so kind, you both do what I ask—you, of 
     course, fucking me, him playing what, though 
     inharmonic, coheres because of the unified 
     structure of spectral formation, and this 
     resonant generosity heals . . .”

Or my own memory, deified diary, if it all hinged 
     on first sight, could I remember others? A girl’s
     brown hair, straight 
line below shoulder, long bangs over forehead, 
     perpetually dabbed with those blue rolling 
     papers, the color of a Marian headscarf, static 
     bringing it toward me seated behind, 7th grade 
     history 
on risers, and locks again, another image of early 
     love, this time perfect ringlets, again in front—
     I always sit behind the one I want—shaving 
     K.’s head under the northern 
lights, and then the stubble separating a tiny pink 
     tee from P.’s waistband—it’s all furred, we 
     passed notes 
about the leg hair visible above the socks of 
     terrorists, touching their calves with silver 
     glitter gel, yes, if I enter seven stupors, cubed, 
     drawing seven sets 
of amorous info (1. a running account of B.’s first 
     visit, my prompt, 2. summaries of songs or 
     books or films that define love, 3. return to 
     “taste” as question 
of sexual preference, 4. fictional phone sex, 5. free 
     space, just some stanza, 6. weather and/or 
     meals, and 7. scenes of friendship), I’ll find 
     love

On the stoop, where you could hear that the rain 
     was warm, imagine bonito flakes curling up as 
     they fall on the mayo heated by tots, and then 
     the plate turns 
out to have a fire beneath it, it all cooks again, it’s 
     paper crinkled by the hands of one of those 
     long-nailed ASMR girls, this was the 
     atmospheric situation, a bag of dirt 
I left out for repotting the snake plant was catching 
     more water than my cup, I’d done this before, 
     waited for the internet 
to send love up, and I’d seen its seasons, I was not 
     naive, I remembered snow 
tracked in by flames’ boots, plenty, I’d read of 
     lovers’ dreams becoming storms, I’d seen 
     beagles who’d spread their legs above heating 
     grates in floors die young, girls had stumbled 
through my door, onto rugs, needing me to tell 
     some truth a guy postponed perilously long, 
     and I wrapped them in the textiles appropriate 
     to the month, this was an environment 
designed to demonstrate it wasn’t chill of me to 
     wait outside, where I might have 

Turned it into friendship, modeling my posture 
     after however I first recline when I understand 
     a new friend 
is settling into a story, or pulling my navel in, 
     undoing the back arch, rolling shoulders to 
     make chest approach the sky, as if I could calm 
     down 
someone else’s anxious narration by appearing
     before them as a statue of a mind at rest, a
     woman 
who has given up the years of wondering why she 
     did not kiss me more but is still in the middle
     of the years 
where she will wonder this about others, and as she 
     speaks I try on her clothes, too small, but I can 
     squeeze myself 
into this image of a woman despairing about the 
     likelihood of dying or living alone, I extend 
my elbow, ripping the garment, hand it back, as if 
     to ask “how ‘alone’ if here before 

[ . . . ]