embodying the transitive, love for my love's partner

your girlfriend is training to be a dominatrix,

wait until I fucking tell our friends back home!

your wide eyes, you speak just as slowly

despite that same writhing silence, I marvel at your considered words.

you were like that at fourteen, my friend.

this privilege is called continuity:

She explains why domination and I explain why you

the shell-shocked new city boy, I did not have the words back then

to say that I liked you because you were not a brat like the others when you walked home.

but it is more complicated because to her

you are that city boy

This is learning called making friends.

On the whiteboard in the house you share he wrote

plurality of affection

I watch you reckon with it

and want to say, this is what's wrong

in order to feel more ease that what I do is different

but there is no flaw there

this process that I am witnessing

this is what success looks like

this witnessing, reckoning, plurality.

But am not your plurality, on this slow time frame that we are

I am one testament to the inherent openness.

I love you, you love him, and I ache with love

for both of you, watching this life you are making

that I have not chosen and would not chose.

I call you back home to make sure you have the memorial's address.

we have not spoken in a year, old lover, but I want to make sure you know.

you do.

the dominatrix is working at the brain tumor society and I think,

all things are connected, if superficially so.

love begets love, and even amidst embedded goodbyes

I know you are not going anywhere,

and so the people you bring in to the world are a gift that you share.