Working on a poem... it's really good. I think. Anyway, it's for this. I have to submit 3-5 poems and I'm not sure which ones from my collection. Maybe I'll just write all new ones? I don't know. Exciting stuff, though. I wanted to go to Paris this summer but I figure this writer's intensive is probably more fruitful than a month in France. IF I get it, of course.

If I get it, R.I.P. crepes. R.I.P. Louvre. R.I.P. rue Cler. R.I.P. Oscar Wilde's tomb, Lover's Bridge, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, Cafe de Flor, Musee d'Orsay, Versailles and macarons and cheap Merlot and nights out dancing along the Seine, and sleepy mornings with cafe au lait and Jean-Paul Sartre and half-smoked cigarettes. Rest in peace.

Okay, I'm done.

The writers teaching in this program are absolutely incredible. I just about died when I saw Louise Gluck's name (fucking Eros). Not to mention Jorie Graham, Robert Pinsky, Frank Bidart... Getting this would be amazinggggg.

So, that's what I'm up to! My creative writing class is going well at Southwestern, too. We have to write a short story next month. I already know the end, wanna hear it? (this is a rough draft, by the way)

"Is this real?"

"I don't know." 

She cups his cheek, thumb grazing over two-day stubble. His jaw is tight from the uncertainty of her answer, and she can tell he wants to flinch at her touch, wants to run away from her indefinitely, but he doesn't. Never has. Wouldn't dare.

He'd give her a grenade and wait patiently by her side until she unpinned it.  

Funnily enough, she'd do the same.

"I don't care," she says quietly, "it feels real."

The exhale from his lips comes directly from his soul, and she can smell it. The heady, heavy scent of tentative trust. Like a child testing out his legs.

And she can hear the pumping of his heart. Taste the blood flow through every vein. Feel the way his limbs breathe with him and come back to life again; all at once. 

She knows this like her favorite poem: line-by-line, eyes closed.

"Yeah?" He asks, and he searches her eyes imploringly. Desperately. But he should know the answer, damn it. How could he not know?

Suddenly she is overcome, undone, wrecked with her want to kill his fear. To choke it and bury it and spit on its grave. This is her man to protect and love. This is her person in all of this world--reality, dreams, wherever the fuck--it's all the same. 

This is HER person.

"Yes," she answers, but it's more of a smile than anything.

He nods then, runs a hand through his slicked back hair. His lips quirk into an awkward shape like all those times she made a clever joke and he'd do his best to avoid smiling. To avoid giving her the pure satisfaction.

She mustn't know this conversation was 3.4 seconds away from ruining him (even if he knows she knows). 

There are just some things you don't need to say.

"Tea, then?"