living
with
latent
a collection of poems by cassidy scanlon
love
ii
the love in leaving
we overflowed exhaled into impossibility the faulty stilts of our home, an illusion of four walls and completion. we were always meant to be fragmented, thru text thru distance, miscommunication of spirit. of purpose.
i was seeped in your world and you were an echo in mine. interpreting loss at a loss for love, misplacement of devotion. the foundation of our dreams folded. listless ending in stagnant spite. decay and speculation of what could only be everything or nothing.
iii
i tried to erase you / window of grief iv
i loved you and then i lost you in this experiment of unchartered intimacy
v
learning to live with(out) you
vi
what to do with all this love pilled on my chest like stone weights dead-end dates how many men will i let leave me
dry, high, sighing pleasure disguised as pain, not even the sexy kind. i miss you, but there’s nothing i can do to revive you could not give me the world so I buried our love in the ocean between us.
there are still pieces of you, shell-slivered memories melting and melding like the metal i moved through to meet you. quiet eulogy of matrimony, of the moon, of loving you too soon. vii
i left warm beds
to sleep
und e r cold
covers.
viii
i hold fear closer than lovers tumbling and chasing me in dreams always the ‘one’ asking for stillness.
and i, so unwilling to stay to say my throat trapped truth leading me astray, licking lovers like flames the residue of their skin burning my tongue.
they say desire is empty then how am I so full of lonely?
skin scarred by disdain, my heart with a softness rendered tender by years of intimate shame.
ix
oscillating between opposites. we are so similar in our difference. tropique
du Capricorne, du Cancer.
x
the way water stains, leaving liquid remnants that dry up as quickly as we said goodbye, waving to the ocean like waves are old lovers and seashells are tokens of plans we made but couldn’t finish so we abandoned them, until the sea turned into a desert where our love is a memory fading through fingertips like sand.
xi
xii
do you the time
remember you almost drowned?
helplessly swaddled threatened
strained
by a strong current.
to pull you under.
die each time lines.
i didn’t even
in sunrise, felt your caress
i thought i knew
you
soft voices over
get to see you
without shoes.
stretched
a violence that
irony in the way
the phone turns off.
but i still saw you on sand
limbs
one last time. each time i walked
some storms kill quietly. how to read your over
silence
6,000 miles
of regret.
xiii
xiv
xv
i left to see the other side. here i am, mowing the grass i thought was greener because it rains here more than there is a place that i used to live. in your heart, in your apartment by the river that never ran.
i am always running. whether it’s away or to you, from you, because of you.
you must think me
a marathon.
xvi
you remain etched in irresolution.
i carry grievance like it’s natural to
give birth to still dreams
xvii
a breath of air. looking up, sun skin on brownstone. was this the place? the person i was meant to be, the person i’m becoming. even though you’re gone, i look for you. window shopping lives, the ones we could have lived together. what does it even mean to be apart? a part of something, someone. hearts halved
by
expectation
and missed
reciprocation.
i left you speechless. lips parted by time, fear fled the scene. did it always have to be an unequal exchange? i just wanted to be free. the mourning wakes in me and we move on following the cloud’s example.
xix
le fantasme du notre intimité. amour du passé présent mais oublié celles temps indéfini, suspendu par la silence de tes yeux.
the fantasy of our intimacy love of the past present but forgotten those indefinite times, suspended by the silence xx
of your eyes.
ghost lover
frozen in film
haunting
the dog-eared
edges
of
memory.
xxi
xxii
you are here for a reason, even if it’s just the decision you made. you made it, for a reason. became who you are, because all you could do was grow.
i know that doesn’t make the hurt any easier doesn’t mask the memory of what his love felt like.
i know you long to forget the way you smiled over morning coffee the adventures hand held in the cradle of your heart.
you loved him for a reason. you left him for another.
xxiii
we
are rivers
touching different oceans.
we
are slivers reflecting disjunction but pieced together like stars. cosmic collusion. we pass each other like planets.
xxiv
possibility? a slow return enmeshed in latent love.
xxv
© cassidy scanlon cassidyscanlon.virb.com @la_sassidy