This Poem Made Me Think Of You.

Lines for Painting on Grains of Rice
by Craig Arnold

You are the kind of person who buys exotic fruits
  leaves them out on the counter until they rot
You always mean to eat them     sometimes you rearrange them
  rousing over the bowl a cloud of tiny flies

      &

How do they balance    the parrot who chews a walnut
sideways     holding it up in his right foot
the owl perched on a just-lit lamppost
  scratching behind its ear     like a big dog

      &

Your pencil eraser wears down long before the point
  for every word you write     you rub out two

      &

Where the slice of toast rested     the plate is still warm
  a film of fog     little points of dew

      &

Love is like velocity     we feel the speeding up
  and the slowing down     otherwise not at all
the more steady     the more it feels like going nowhere
  my love I want to go nowhere with you

      &

I cannot bring myself to toss the cup of cold coffee
you set down by the door on your way to the taxi
all day I have sipped it     each time forgetting
your two tablets of fake sugar     too sweet

Apart

I am struggling with this separation as I struggled with crushes on boys in high school and college. I am craving your attention, desperately hoping that you will notice me and talk to me. But as it was then, my signs are too subtle and some only exist in my head. That is, it seems I’d rather that you could just read my mind and know exactly when and how you should communicate with me. Maybe I am still getting used to this, but I am feeling like we never should have embarked on this remedy for our plateau of a relationship. I want you back with me, I want to spend every evening with you and sleep with you and just hope, pray now and then, that we’ll find our way to some place like where we began.

Last night I called you about picking up my coffee table in Coraopolis and I very badly wanted to ask you to come with me. I knew I couldn’t for the sake of our separation and so, when you offered before I asked, I immediately refused—we’ve set out to accomplish something, so we ought to stick with it and find out what we’ll be accomplishing, in the end. I've been trying to convince myself of this, but rather than ease my ache to be with you, it makes me frustrated and upset. I’m almost sure we should complete these two weeks apart, but should we really see each other on the weekends? I’m afraid that will be confusing and will erase all that we worked for in the business days before.

Perhaps I should think of this as a piece of writing. I have always put a work-in-progress away for some time and then returned to it, looking for something new I hadn't noticed before, an error in spelling or a sentence that needs rearranging; sometimes, even whole paragraphs are eagerly raising their hands like students, begging to be placed on the third page, instead of the last. What’s different is that I’ve never felt so desperate to return to the work, or excited to find what I may have missed. Usually, I am scared of it.

All my love.

Dear Marlon.

Hello

Glasses are for your asses.