Spinning

Eventually the song had to end and I 
frowned at the record, head spinning
you didn’t lift the needle you just
pulled the cord.

Stop rearranging the furniture to feel content,
stop feeling content with rearranging furniture. 
I pushed you into the water for a good reason,
I’m sure.

Don’t you hate it when you can’t tell where a 
photo was taken?
I don’t write with curlicues anymore, but
I bet you’d hate it anyways.

I leaned over to see the song on repeat
you kept flipping it over like a burned pancake
Talk louder,
I can’t hear.

At some point I forgot that the iris didn’t 
bob around the eye like a buoy in opaque saltwater 
you said darling, the sun’s not innocuous  
and I said I was a liar, wasn’t I?

What happened? The song skipped, the record
didn’t scratch it 
shattered.
I’m going to buy a new one
for you
once I’ve stopped living for the knife.

I will never laugh with you again, I’ll keep my mouth
sealed and I’ll never be able to tell the difference between a synecdoche and a metonymy without 
your odd voice, clipped consonants and drawn-out vowels.

You said darling, you’re going to fall.
I tripped and hit the water almost as hard as 
your words would inevitably hit me
I said I didn’t know anything, did I?

I never rolled the window down and I will soon
I promise.
Tell me your middle name and I’ll remember his, 
as I draw on paper that used to be mine with hands that never were.

“It’s like ten thousand dictionaries when all you need is the definition of ironic,” you said and I
cried laughing
your hands were mortuary cold and I 
slipped and fell in the mud and I was sorry
sorry you weren’t there to see it.

There’s a reason I didn’t sign my name, I just
don’t remember it.
There’s a reason you put on the album, I just
didn’t want to hear it.

Maybe I’ll never read Stephen King after all, actually.
Maybe you’ll pay for nothing, like 
oxygen and flat notes 
tinny sounds in the distance and a 
ripped index.
You break it, you sell it?

Maybe the only reason I knew he died was because of you 
you pretended to know about the world through the screen so you could call me
yours 
I ricocheted off you like a marble,
you called me
bad at math.

I told him there was a song stuck in my head every minute of every day because
you didn’t want to hear it anymore.
What did that mean? It had to
end.
Didn’t it?

Lean forward in your seat,
so we can meet eyes for no good reason. Your friends
laughed at me so I 
tore papers and kept 
Georgia quarters. 

I was never any good at 
accepting dead leaves I just remember the words
salmon pink
a gate, closed like your eyes
so I wove green, teal, purple, red string, do you remember?
I wanted the melody to whisper on repeat forever
but eventually, the song had to end.