“H & I have almost the perfect relationship of
being palindromic, mirror reversible, & reflective as well
as lying next to each other in the alphabet
one rotates into the other H is I’s magic name thus
to know H is to control I the knowledge of I (self) is
impossible without the knowledge of H
(I’s real name)”
— bpNichol
I
Last night you asked me which of my eyes you look better out of, right or left, and I said right because the ridge of my nose frames your face better, but I didn’t tell you it was because of the woman that lives on my right cheekbone, sewing and tilling grain who looks at you like a giant, lying I’m laying down in my head. This woman, +, hitches up a rig every time you get close to me, trying to colonize your face, to meet the woman on your face, ☐, infatuated from a distance. + dies faster than we do, and now she’s weary from age and ready to see ☐ again one last time. Early and relay use the same letters.
H
The day after the night we met I took you into the Arboretum, packing healthy snacks, matching JBL speakers, a journal — our ears still blown out from the house show we both almost bailed on last night, where we watched kids dance on the other side of the window as we whispered next to the speakers. HI. We meditated through the tunnel, making ☐ feel at home in the hole of your nose, and we found our way down to the big rock that 17 year-olds always twist their ankle climbing up, seeming small from the nose rock that has watched those kids kiss for 14 billion years. I don’t remember much about that day other than how chapped your lips were and the poems we wrote side by side in my journal, unable to read your handwriting I can make out “I’ve always been so focused on huing in the moment that I think it’s easy to forget to hue, and nature and this reminds me to breathe’’ ending with your favorite word. Then, you shortened my middle name to Hew. Rescue and secure use the same letters.
II
This was the last time I saw you consistently, H. Boulevard Park is named wrong and I propose we rename it to “hitherto” which is a word I always segment as hit/her/toe, which is what you get when you learn words from books. I love when you drive me around, looking out the window and I can just tell you whatever I’m thinking about. You’re the only one that bothers to decode what I have to say, maybe our love is a rubik’s cube. Windows are closer to mirrors than they are to eyesight. Really looking out for you here. You might think you see through them, but windows just show you yourself, looking at you through the glass of my I’s through a telephone and an orange jumpsuit, which will be chic in 5 years, seriously. + is the only one of me who really gets to see the world as it is, on my nose as opposed to behind it. We were then sitting on a bench as I wrote poems about tea and you helped with color words for pottery, the ochre freckles on your palms are sunspots on the water through the window, you have me in the kiln of your hands. I’m the artefact // you never told me any // anthropology // I’m stuck in Chauvet cave you’re // kicking at the top soil. (soil. oils. palms. psalm.)
HH
We haven’t talked in 3 months, which is why you’re a liar when you say you’ve known me for 7. I’m back in California in my always dream and F, who was my answer when you asked my favorite person (issues with closeness)and I were playing chess. I took his pawn on F5 with my H rank pawn. He tookit back with his. I moved my rook to H8. He goes “This whole game is about H8, I swear to God.” I think it’d be too much if there were 8 of you, mirrored 3 times, wondering if they all h8 me, but they’re all “just busy.” I look down and see ☐ on the marbled chessboard like a stained glass window. F asked my favorite memory and I said something about the White Cliffs of Dover but I wanted to say the first time we had sex, the only time I remember, when we were kept up by the Binyon Vision Center sign on Magnolia, split an Oreo McFlurry like the capitalist you are, and smelled eachother’s hair. You said you were ready to love me at 45, I wanted to remind you that I’ve been 45 for a long time. Rail. Liar.
III
You drove the four of us to the shadow of Mt. Baker because we all just bought 5 grams of dried mushrooms and we all felt ready. I wrote you poems that were just roadsigns I saw out the windows (“Pass With Care”). I blinded myself with an orange beanie to keep the sun out of my I’s and when I opened my I’s 4 hours later you were colorless, waiting to see the yellow of the sun again — I said that words weren’t enough. I said that I was made of purple vitriol. I said I kept my name purely out of habit and for you to tell me your First Middle Last so I could meet you in order. I said a lot of things but the big one was
H, there’s no way I feel H
I wanted to be made of only one element. Technetium. 43 mapped alphabetically to DC. Radioactively throwing my tonsils at you. I said I wanted to sell out. I said that you were hurting me. I asked in front of everyone with the taste of tearied snot on my lips (flooding +’s garden) why you’re only around me when you happen to be around me. Like I just have to get lucky. You asked later if I was ready to love you and I said I already do, in front of those we pretended to be “just friends” to. Your ripped jeans gave you more vitamin D. You said it was your turn to take care of me after you did all those edibles and needed me to stroke your hair. You said a lot of things but the big one was there’s no
I but there’s an H you wrote sideways in cigarette ash (same letters as “has”).
HHH
The word for three stones, one on top of two supporting stones, is trilithon. At Stonehenge, I wished you were here to tell me anthropology, thinking that if I had the smallest amount of druidic blood, by their own homeopathic language, I’d be diluted enough to belong here. Henge g’s the H. Barrow swallows the uu. Burru. Burrito. A small burru. Your fingers in front of your face, an H between words. Everyone I ever loved will crumble into dust. Shrug g’s the /sh/. Maybe I don’t write poems that punch you. /ch/’s the p. Nothing like Ovid. ~O. d’s the O. Euphonics /ick/’s the /you/. Maybe I don’t /p/ /ch/ but maybe it’s a nose tracing across your face as I say something silly. /s/ /s/ /s/. Later that day, I saw that Turner painting in the Salisbury Museum and I wished I was there to tell you more. I looked through the window at W.H. Smith because I recognized you on the storefront. I couldn’t get stamps for the postcard I wrote to you, so I wrote the atom symbol for hydrogen on top with its atomic weight 1.008 and resolved that I asked your address for nothing. Region and ignore use the same letters.
IIII
After the day at the lake, not the day after but the night during when the other two went to bed, you asked if I wanted to go for a walk. We walked for about 3 minutes before I asked you what you wanted to do with us. You like an 8-ball always answer “Ask Again Later.” We looked up at Mt. Baker and it looked just like our noses on the landscape and I could see the lines between the stars when you held my hand. We sat down on the log next to the extinguished fire and you pulled closer to me. You knew I’d kiss you back if you asked. + was asleep, vacationing by the large body of water of my mouth, unable to climb into your I’s. When you pulled back your plump and cool lips I felt the night air hit the fresh wound on my face left by your teeth and I zoomed in on your face and it was made of letters, with our hands’ greedy everything. We kithed, we kithed, we kithed under thtars made of only one element. (Develop spells eloped with no v).
HHHH
Last night, I saw you at a poetry reading. You finished your poem with “I don’t have to love you just because you’re there.” I am here but you’re not getting lucky. L told you to drop me off last and I said I had a postcard for you that I had no intention to give. You came in and my dog barked loudly at you because of everything I said to her. You sat down on my bed and took my hand and I showed you some of the poems I wrote when I was away. One said “I actually don’t experience stimulus and all of my actions are just lucky guesses.” You asked if I could feel you touching my knee. I asked if you were trying to break me. You kissed me like the lake and I told you I love you. You asked if you had to respond, I said I wouldn’t hear you anyways. Now, I get to ask you which of my wall hangings looks best in the reflection of the window, and I hold you in my arms as I look in the mirror and you say the poem on my wall has a lot of “H energy” like the bomb and then it clicks, H, that together we, H and I, make a window into a box with a cross we are ☐ laid on top of eachother, remove the W out of continuum and we are + and ☐ and that’s why you will never let me go because we might be the unit that we see each other through, and now I have found my magic name, and now I have discovered the letters I am made from. You finally ask my favorite color. Purple. And I ask yours. Yellow. And soon you will stop responding to my texts, but when I heard your heartbeat through my chest I thought on-again/off-again is what keeps us alive. Oscillate. Localites.
IIIII
Here’s every word in the breakup twitter DM’s that started with H or I, I don’t owe you any analysis: I’m, in, I’ve, i, helpful, in, how, I, it, in, i, it’s, i, it, healthy, honestly, healthy, it, in, I’m, I’ve, in, head, I, im, how, ill, happy, I’ll, happy, Im, five, i, five, it, I, I, I’d’ve, I, I, I, I, I. (I and H use the same letters.)