Max Stone

Fuck You, We’re Cute

Watching the shadows shift all day,
skinnying & loping
across the parking lot until they switch & shorten
squat gestural murmurings into dark.
He left another note for me in my underwear drawer.
Melted candle wax on the coffee table,
water all over the bathroom floor,
Jumpscare at the dicks drying on the sink.
Slurry of unread texts.
Demanding noise just beyond our touch,
wanting so much something from us.
What didn’t we or did we do this time?
Same as it ever was.
Who has been doing what?
I don’t get it—
why can’t we just be in love?
At least we’re pretty. So gddmn cute it makes you mad.
We made a blanket fort for our two-week anniversary.
Roll your eyes.
That’s fine.
The bluenesss circles back.
He’s familiar as trust, as blue—
Magic and dependable in the slanted gold light hitting the creases in my sheets
this late November morning—morning so close to afternoon they almost kiss,
like we did after my reading that night when we were lying on my bed, my legs
wrapped over his
that Sunday in September,
10 years after I leapt into the sky,
straightshot to the sun until
I fell back into the dark
dark nothing
nothing but dark begetting more dark—
so dark everything stopped meaning.
I made myself fine again. After a while.
Somehow, I did.
And now, in the house of great relationships,
the prince makes sense,
he’s a beautiful little jewel.
& I am a prince among men, too.
I love him already.
Who cares how soon.
Fuck you, we’re cute.
Met his art first, back in April.
He spun the endless beige-grey awful
of hospitals, illness, IV bags, and band-aids into peace into flowers—
see, beauty even in a place like that—using
the same muted blue I’d use to track my moods when the year soon
would yellow into June.
Didn’t know then but we knew.
Now he clutches my heart. I got his too.
We dance by the fountain in our fever dream at the Palazzo
in El Dorado Hills.
Fuck these tasteless apples.
Sunset ablaze over the lake.
We had to stop, take it in.
More good coming. It did—It does.
We’re such cute devils.
We made my room red, touched each other.
That was the best night until the next one came.
Sleepy green dragon in my bed.
He;s here even if he’s not.
Let’s be little princes in Autumn,
walking down 14th Street on East Coast jazz time.
Pleasant surprises. The pieces fit together—
I made him a collage. Hewrote me a letter.
All of our friends crunched up leaves—blowing together.
Some get lost in the wind. They’ll come back,
or not.
It really is wonderful.
I have been strong and silent, and I don’t
want that anymore.
My turn to be angry,
at all of the people. The people around us who
need to
just sit down and fucking listen.
All these people who care about us
without ever thinking about us except through themselves:
through their discomfort, their desires, their beliefs about who
we are.
Leave us to be
cute in the park, reading to each other,
taking turns being the sun.
Go find out who you are.
Why are you so afraid?
It’s not our fault
you don’t know.
We are peaceful.
Diamond light hits our teeth,
we’ve ached to be seen like this,
glitter gods are.
It is a process of our souls bleeding out onto
the paper that is our skin.
Hoping to be seen by everyone, but that’s too much
to ask from you, isn’t it?
You’re busy mourning the selves
we never were. The selves—our selves
not your selves—that you attached to your identity.
You had a daughter. You had a sister. No, you didn’t.
Just didn’t know.
Know we were hidden inside that shell you became
so attached to. Do you want a shell or a person in front of you?
A person who’s happy, bursting with light to shine back on you.
Or a memory of the shell you thought was a person, and no one in the future.
Well, I don’t care what you want anymore.
I just want to be with him driving the blue Volvo down the highway
in the Pacific Northwest light rain spattering the windows
our hands in our hands listening
to the songs we fell in love to.
Why wouldn’t you want that for us?
Why wouldn’t you?
 
Maybe everything we do is wrong.
The ordinary teach us to see color everywhere.
I am not getting closer.
Wait,
God is a flower.
We have enough time.
Doing nothing is hard.
A whole forest of useless trees.
Sun gone by five, another winter—
what a surprise.
Cheeks sparkling a little,
I slip on the ice,
choke on common sense.
We always forget.
A rainbow shines a shard of everything on my hand—
it means I like a boy
and I am a boy who didn’t always get to be a boy,
so when I liked the first boys they didn’t quite get
what I was, which was fine. Only, it wasn’t.
Bitter as a ghost but smiling so cute
bc it’s all oh wells and whatevers now bc
I’m in love with another boy who didn’t always get to be a boy.
He’s here in the poem, smiling all crinkly at me (which means he loves me too).
So yeah, fuck you,
we’re cute.