I Love You Into Pluto -- Laynie Browne

I've been waiting all day for this moment, to be alone with you, with your words, your thoughts, alone meaning reflection as you stopped to look at me my pulse stopped and started, unblemished by shame of looking at you, the bones of this arc of understanding. When I stop to look at you my breath stops in a way to make breathing possible. I remember to breathe you. I breathe. You are my breath, and when you walk, you meaning an understanding that the body is of your making, I see with other senses uncompromised by physical limitations. A pause is of physical nature affronts a pause of the cycling of the mind and below the mind. I return to in your keeping, light in the dark as we descend I see a figure stream into the room. Intentionality to walk into a dark room with only the lightness of your body which you could not see but which everyone else could see. Dark pitch and snow falling thick and fast. Could not bear to look at you. The face of, into the face of I cannot look at it. Bring a friend to your face who might see the face differently who then , who, as you stepped into your glance at me, not shy, not able to contain such a gaze. Come back to me ostensibly as returned liquid light. You, face of beauty, incarnation you light in folded dark, I want the letter to be more flowery, he said, the love letter to yourself, in a dark room you mentioned, you underslayer of dark, remnants of dark, of the letters and numbers printed on bombs dropping on Iraq at this moment, the newspapers which I stroll past in my stroller, strolled boys of divine light oblivious to the faces of children buried in rubble, would I shield them, gladly, which little (young) inside the mother/father garden, past those images frayed with the visual recognition of destruction. I've been waiting my whole life for this movement, to turn to you, meaning to look at the images gladly last, fear fully unblemished by shame of looking directly at you as I am of you, of the rubble in the photograph of the child lost in contentment I hold, locked eyes with the image of destitution. I am of you and I choose you, the child buried in rubble. I choose to walk into the dark room with luminosity apparent. Where we may walk together. You phosphorescent my breath catches along the edges of your sky, my chest expands along the edges of my small understanding of you, understanding little in smallness. Grand apprehension, apprehend, apprenticeship, pretend ship, aboard, not vessel but voyage, preternatural, of nerves and muscles, clavicle turned, of needing one's hands for small tasks, the very sight of you bears no plainsightedness. The luminous room where ritual marks a cadence time in even keeping, an intimate animal, elusive, wholly imaginary, to accompany us through this dwindling corridor.

I love you into Pluto, beyond the spot, sit on my lap and eat a sandwich drinking sideways from the corner of your mouth, having a cup of juice with you, or you are luminous and I am up waiting in bed sleeping as you arrive tiredly into bed pulling over the bed to your side, beckoning bodily, beyond pluto. I love you into the milky way. This could be a children's book, which begins, I love you into the clouds, then the moon, then the other planets, and onwards, outwards to infinity, he said. Just always to be with you, even on the potty mommy. From where did it come, his luminous body? With all of it's feeling. Jakey, lie down, it's sleepy time. How is it that meditation changes reality, that which ritual marks, separate, so that returning to a task, to a thought, I touch everything differently. We were made of trees and we shook madly. The neighbor moves out of the neighborhood. I have a history of inexplicable love for you. How to entertain the illogical. Is it logical to look at a forest and see a parking lot? I have a history of love for you that is not my history exclusively. There is no "you" in the sentence that approaches you aptly. There is only the sentence where it attempts to carry thought, missing along the way at every you. But the you in the sentence is the multipresent you, the you drinking or sitting, the you sleeping, the you in the newspapers, the you idiotic, yelling, the you stomping away, the you lifting boxes in the garage searching for something at my request, the you planting seeds, scrubbing floors, the you distant, invisible, everpresent, the you ringing the telephone far too often, the you crying walking into the walls, the you irritated at that time of night, the you searching for remedies, the you allergic to wheat and the you allergic to cats and the you preferring an aisle seat, the you not helping but running, the you leaning drawers open and dishes dirty, the you walking across the kitchen counter, the you missing or deliberately absent, the you of no image, the you of divine image, the you you disagree with, the you in any one continuous sentence, the you in debt, the you inversed, reading something trivial, repeating untrue words, the you listening, the you into all of the planets. The you shifting reality.

We are animals standing very still until someone presses our buttons. Then we walk or run. Then we are still again.