Splash of Rain: a Yankee Candle scent
James Bowden
So this is how I am to mourn–
with the sweet scent of rose jam,
the exfoliating burn,
silent warm rain and shower thoughts
and snapchats and instagram posts
and poetry thrown into the void
unpopped popcorn and untouched bracelet string
the eternal you on my mind
shall I split me
from what is you?
can I?
is this me choosing short term james
over long term longing,
or perhaps, it is really you
who is choosing not to choose
some summer night,
some rainy morning
I hope I see you again
–you, my youthful eagerness
as if the two could be separated
I was rereading this poem and remembering how when I took the bus up to visit Rachel, it stopped midway through California so we could eat and stretch our legs and I asked her if she wanted anything, I didn’t get lunch because I had my protein bar anyway and I’d spent enough money getting up there and was likely going to spend more on all the eating out and the wonderful udon place we went to twice that week, me getting the bukkake udon, because food as a love language and all. Anyhow, I asked her if she wanted anything, and because she didn’t respond quickly enough, I nervously bought her some hardly-any-salt skinny pop because she’d always been into the stuff. A tiny convenience store bag. Brought it to her along with my shitty home-made patchwork rubber-banded flower bouquet, just because I felt so much out of place, power dynamics impossibly imbalanced. My heart seizes up once again thinking of this small detail. At how child I was, how young and unstable and trying to learn to love or really what to do with all the love when you’ve irrevocably fucked things already. Here, the unpopped popcorn references some skinny pop microwave bags I’d picked up at the store, of course something I’d never have thought to buy if not for her, but for myself that time, but then there was talk of maybe a visit and so they were laid out on my stand that is really her old stand and then there wasn’t. Perhaps this is another poem in itself.