one man guy.

[star studded]

<center>In pitch dark I go walking in your landscape.
Broken branches trip me as I speak.
Just because you feel it doesnt mean it's there.
Just because you feel it doesnt mean it's there.

There's always a siren
Singing you to shipwreck.
(Don't reach out, don't reach out)
Steer away from these rocks
We'd be a walking disaster.
(Don't reach out, don't reach out)

Just because you feel it doesn't mean it's there.
(There's someone on your shoulder)
Just because you feel it doesn't mean it's there.
(There's someone on your shoulder)

There there

Why so green and lonely?
Heaven sent you to me.

We are accidents
Waiting waiting to happen.

We are accidents
Waiting waiting to happen.</center>

radiohead.

[star studded]

"I want to be the only one who makes you come running."

The image is small, layered, a cluster of tissue with little definition. I have it tucked here away from everything else, folded in the pages of one of my favorite pulp romance novels, In Love with the Night Mysterious. No one will go flipping through it, because no one is dumb enough to read something as terrible as this, except me. I think they're simply fantastic because they're resolute. Everything ends well, tied up in a neat little bow with smiles around. They're nothing like life, so they're unique, I can effectively argue.

He hates that they are on the shelves next to his precious first editions, though they're sectioned off with a book end. I know he has the same picture somewhere. They're scattered all over this house. One on the fridge. One in the top drawer of his night stand. One in his wallet. One in the pages of this Donne book, maybe, or Elements of Style. They're stops on a map of the house. Up the stairs, into the bedroom, look, there's one tucked on the corner of the bathroom mirror. I had almost forgotten that one. It's six weeks older than the ones in the books downstairs.

In here there are pictures of us, grinning at the Champs, half drunk on the cobbled streets near the Seine. This is Paris, where we met, where we tripped over each other and wound up living together for nearly a year while I was writing and he was writing and we were pretending like none of it mattered, really. Really. He looks more serious than he does these days. Back then it was different, but only in small ways. He smiled less, rarely laughed, spoke in short, clipped phrases when he had to. We existed in silence because we simply didn't need verbal communication. We could motion to things, raise an eyebrow, grin over our morning papers and simply know what the other meant. We still do, but now words come easier. For him at least. I've always been the chatty one, the one you can't shut up.

Now he laughs when it's appropriate. It's easy to nudge his ribs and insist that something is funny. He'll agree. He's grown up, if that was possible. We have a lawn to mow, dishes to do, a garden. We have a house with a garden. We planted bluebells and tulips in the front, vegetables in the back. It reminded me of something a long time ago, a kitchen, holding up a lobster, a photo I have tucked away. I had my hands in the dirt and I felt this feeling, this deja-vu, and I felt my throat close and I went inside. "Too much dirt," I told him. "I'm ruining my jeans."

I didn't think he really believed me, but some things go best unspoken. Cans of pink paint. The blue tape around the molding of the upstairs room. Furniture ordered, a pink sweater. A white Birkin bag I demanded for the purpose of loading with tiny, soft things and carrying around. These are the things that simply exist without discussion. We have them because we need them, because we want them, because we will have use for them in a precise amount of time. We are counting by the second and we won't admit it to anyone but ourselves. And you.

I miss him when he works, when I am home with my piano, writing. The record label asks about another album and I hold them off everytime. Talk to me in a year. Talk to me when this is important. Talk to me when I have grown up and learned to live on two hours of sleep and seven cups of Starbucks coffee. Talk to me when my sex life has drained itself of all vigor and vitality, when we live in four hour intervals.

This is my life. This man next to me in bed, these scattered snapshots of someone's insides, these framed pictures, this empty room with blue painters tape, primer and drop cloths, this bathroom to remodel, this lawn to mow. This is here and now, the first place I have ever been that does not remind me of something terrible. Here is home, the foundation, the bricks, the bodies, the vows, the promise.

[star studded]

<center>

I pray for the power to stay in love with you
I pray for the power to stay in love
Like you're supposed to be able to
And you may be the cause of this
Yes, you may be the cause of this low grade happiness

Thus, you must behave
When you're faced with the way I operate
Be brave when I'm facing away from you
And I don't want to cooperate
'Cause I may be the cause of this
Yes, I may be the cause of this low grade happiness
You're a sweet, unlikely savior of a human falling star
Yes, you are

You're a sweet, unlikely savior
Yes, you are.</center>