Light clarity avocado salad in the morning
after all the terrible things I do how amazing it is
to find forgiveness and love, not even forgiveness
since what is done is done and forgiveness isn't love
and love is love nothing can ever go wrong
though things can get irritated boring and dispensable
(in the imagination) but not really for love
though a block away you feel distant the mere presence
changes everything like a chemical dropped on a paper
and all thoughts disappear in a strange quiet excitement
I am sure nothing but this, intensified by breathing.

"Poem," Frank O'Hara

Blaine feels as if everything should be blankwhite like TV snow but nothing is blank nor truly white. It is the morning after he left crumpled with the thick and strange and fuzzy aftermath packed between his ribs. He wants stillness. He wants self-containment, simplicity, but the hallway is ringing warnings and lockers are jarring loud obscenities – persistent noise. Alone now in the swarm of laughter, stinging bits of bitten words, he wanted this. He wanted this aloneness so he could unzip his skin, unhinge his ribs, dislocate joints and figure out what he equals. Figure out if he can be bigger than the sum of his parts. If he can understand how this equals that. Except tonight he doesn’t sleep. He breaks a vase against baseboards and sends a text that says, “I need to stop hating myself." And the returned silence amplifies the metronomic pulse of not yet. Not yet. Not yet. It is too soon. He doesn't think to speak of love; instead, he smiles sickness in the thick of clogged drains and hates himself in the morning. Soon he will forget about those weeds, those daisies and dandelions, wilting in the tin can on the windowsill and wonder if this is the sound of continuous movement, of progress.

There are wind facts about the undoing of piles and messages. Kurt discards, easily, like trees that shake the remnants of fall leaves off skeletal limbs. He heaves and trembles until he is skinless and scrubbed raw. A newness that is temporary comfort, that is an odd prick in his diaphragm, stings wind sharp against flesh and concrete. He doesn't cry, not really. He leaks piles of expectations, of what should have beens, and any necessary means to survival. Sometimes he leaks words, too. Words that say he hates the ruined, the needy, the imperfect, the reliant, and he hates himself, too, as if hate is the dark purple edible fruit of chilly and uncomfortable. Those words remain inside, gnawed in the charm of tar and asphalt, and he only answers in silence. And in silence he realizes he doesn't want to be alone. There is no longer home and here, this city full of glass and reflections, is cold this time of year so he sleeps in the temporary warmth of comforters. He wonders when his phone will stop beeping new attempts and if he will miss the need to discard intentions.

He knows of those holes, of his holes, which strain and shift beneath his skin, carelessly. Kurt sifted through his holes, easily, and Blaine let him. Now he floats in the space of what has been left behind: a locker full of evidence, a choir room, coffee rings on an oak table, friends that knew Kurt before Blaine was himself. There is no harbor, no dock, no anchor, and he is flinging himself in dizzying circles. He chases the tail end of that which has already ended. So, when the tides rise, he learns to knit with his broken ribs and makes a life vest. He saves himself and slow paddles backwards in the mist of a glitterhumid sea. His return is a retraction, a relabeling, a palimpsest of his ars poetica. And, while composing his personal narrative under the guise of an application prompt (concise, up to two pages in length, double spaced, about how your personal background and life experiences, including social, cultural, familial, educational, or other opportunities or challenges, motivated your decision to pursue a degree . . . ), he reassembles, uses his gravel pieces to fill those stubborn holes, and double stitches the seams watertight.

Kurt is self contained, a complete vessel, with tempered steel walls and no air holes. There is no mesh, no permeability. He reflects and refracts light and space and anything that stands in his way. He will always remain whole, never waterlogged or reliant upon another person to fill his holes, to help him float. This is how he survives but his walls are thickdenseblack. Sometimes he doesn't hear those warning bells, those beacons, and he crashes amongst sludge and crab shells. Now he feels cracked open, filleted, and sunburned. He doesn't want to think about this new space, an observation deck filled with noise and other people, something that moves beyond himself, but he does. He thinks about empty containers, about existing beyond himself, and hopes blonde smiles (he doesn't know how to speak this new name yet) and the sick of sweater vests will fill what he cannot define. Water stains remain and those new tan fingers cannot erase the marks left before the aftermath. Suddenly the aftermath is not really an aftermath. It is a small tear, a loosened seam. And he smiles the end, lacquered and bitten red. He is ready to talk now.

If X is love and Y is the space between them, then the navel is the fold of how close they stood within each other. And the belly is where laughter forms. Breathing is intensified, new veins of discourse open, when they meet in sludgy snow, and it feels as if it has been thirtytwohundred years since they were struck apart full of seeds and debris. Flowers bloom from mended ribs. Maybe this street corner under the spectrum of neon lights is their bog and maybe they brought the thickest of wire to stitch a renewed seam. Now they will wake from a dream of paper birds and earthworms and speak of love once more.