September 17, 2021 - Rosa Maks’ “Slow Bye” (Chapter 4)

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3

And Chapter Four, Titled No.

Tonight I just got back here to bed, bed bed bed,
My yellow room where I live still,

You called it diarrhea from your mouth tonight
The amount of all the things you said
It’s always such a hollow to tear away from the place
After work
It’s like I’ve torn away from the sweet nest
of a place I should stay all night
I love you!
In the story you’ve wrought.
THE HOLLOW EMPTY MEANS A RETURN TO THE REST OF THE WORLD.

You’ve been talking about this car
Listings on eBay

I refuse to delude further but I know that you kind of could

I look at your Christmas tree I look at your face in the painting under the brim of a black
hat the face in the nude photo, looking upwards, wrapped around a woman, I look at the
face, across, in the pink under the brim of this lounge the sweet people I hate, the sweet
people I love, tippers or not, tonight was a good one and I wouldn’t trade it, your old
man friend gave me too large a bill, for school, he called it, then spoke about my powers
my spells I am casting, joking about the spells I am casting then breathing into the
Breathalyzer and then you dictate how many more he can have.

The bitch, as you called ‘er, tickling you with a feather as you lean over my candle again
She takes a picture you, me, feather, candle
I’d like to convert it away from cellular file, too precious

You’re not the first one to point out a particular speck fleck of brown I have in iris but I
am so obviously satisfied.

Father boy lover you love me all those ways you just said
Yet you’ve never thought of a kiss or beyond!
Strange dreams you’ve described where I reign queen
Of yours

I wish you’d said strange things on our last Friday before Christmas
But all you said
Is something nondescript
And forgettable
Only that we had twelve nights left

I wanted to go and ride away and go camping for months
I wanted to come back after that for a second and depart again this time for long
To the southwest
Now I don’t want to anymore
Because how to leave your moviemaking

How to leave your spark-eye smirk at them all
Your big inspiration
Your antics
Your stumbling out when I come to help with whatever in the morning
Your cute disgusting stumble
When you’re wearing the same dog hairy flannel you slept in
And a t- shirt from a veteran’s organization
And your ash is in the exquisite golden ashtray next to pipe and beer and matchbook
This is the only time I’ve known a person to be real
Make me an offer
Stop counting down
Stop telling me I’m leaving to do wonderful things
Make me an offer
Make me an offer
Force me to stay here
to live in this place
Give me the bar til I can’t bar no more
Don’t let me lose this don’t let me go back down there where the people talk about
things I don’t get
Where they have hard to understand frameworks
Where they are disappointed
Where they head towards global calamity

I feel a realization, gracious gracious stupefier.
You built something rare.
A point where energy converges and at first it looks normal looks brooklyn looks
legitimate in all its bureaucratic duties
for hipsters
But being inside it
Having a tarot card role inside it, standing within it for more than three years now
cracking open beer cans in the dark,
It becomes so clear
That what you’ve made
cannot be boring.

We’ll be buried dead, you about thirty or forty years sooner than me
The last green night I sell beer and whiskey and vodka for you I will try to express my
love and then after that I don’t think I will ever again.

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Rosa Maks was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She is also a printmaker and is currently trying her hand at a degree in print in Tucson, Arizona. She's also a poet, freelance writer and aspiring banjo player; passions include music, creative writing and long distance bike touring. She has worked as a chess teacher, a bike frame sander, a candle maker and gallery assistant, among others. Too mercurial for her own good, she hopes her non-fiction creative writing and true-story poems speak in her place. You might find her at Rockaway Beach in Queens, dragging her bike through a dune or somewhere far from home, picturing that very image with longing.