L’esprit De Escalier
something I wrote last summer for someone I genuinely miss very, very much.
The first lesson learned about treasure hunting
is that you can never fail
you can only
get closer.
so while you were in the 15 foot hole named after me
I wondered if that’s how you justified
finding my empty chest
and I hope you have found the maps
i misplaced when i came to this city
with only a shovel
when I used to romance your spine
like the oak handle
looking for something inside myself
I once dug up the 1 train
like a fallen ladder
so we could climb out of this together
but you never came
so I hung our dirty laundry
on the turnstile
and let other people in
until you were gone
but I hope you know
i cringe at the thought
that he may be calling my
vacant attempts at unearthing x’s
in the worn braille of your back
a cemetery
because treasure hunts and fresh graves
look the same when you don’t know who was digging
and I hope you know
when you were just a foggy horizon line
i cut the slack in my sails
and called you discovery, knowing
I would never get used to meaning
foreign
that I never planned on
almost
that you never deserved
to look like my signature
your curves jotted down so hastily
that your name was one only I could read.
know that
when his fingers are pacing
the benches outside west 27th
he will try to call those foundations
a trench,
forgetting the first rule of treasure hunting
she was only getting closer
though, i didn’t mind
hiding in them
while we tried to kill each other
and I know
they’re too deep for him
my fingernails told me so
told me “so what if you made a hole?
there are deserts full of them
waiting to conceal anything
and call it treasure”
and I hope you know I never lied to you
only when I played your sleeping ribs like piano keys
until you awoke, and I said the sound of us making music
was only in your dreams
above all else, I wish there was something we answered to
a description better than
“love hanging off the ledge of the hour hand”
this way the flyers I hung around midtown
wouldn’t just be pictures of a smoke stack
I’ve been nameless for a year now
since i left dog tags on your ankles
when i dragged you from that ditch
so your escapes would always
sound like me
but if you could say it just once
without cringing
i’ll thimble each finger
so we don’t have that same argument over
how a needle doing all it knows how to
an accident
and i’ll turn this sword into a shovel
raise the height of the clouds
so you think I’ve been digging
i will promise
never to ride my shield
out of here
again
