An Inventory

REVISION Part III (The Sea)

I care about you because you are beautiful the way cities at night are beautiful.

It’s an image I understand only as a falling, an adventure into spaces I fear I have no business occupying, and yet inhabit for the simple reason that I care about you.

You see me, and this opacity allows me to feel safe in a way that I haven’t felt (safe) in a very long time. It’s not a safety of objects but of location – a place I call home, an arrival.

I care about you because although you understand nothing, you understand me on an elemental level (of each thing ask what it is in itself – its nature) in a way that doesn’t require a mapping of my deficiencies: an inability to live small, to feel less, to hold my tongue.

I care about you because you represent a harmony - like Hieronymus Bosch’s perfect spheres: the ultimate correspondence of content and surface.

I like the transgressions reflected, singularly, in the way you look at things.

I care about you because, in your presence, I speak of acts whose memory is enough to sever me. (Looking at you I remember two things: that idiotic discussion of Madame Bovary’s eyes and the fact that they constantly change color – like Flaubert didn’t know what he was doing, and kept giving her dark eyes, blue eyes, hazel eyes - Nobody thought: it’s a reflection of the fireplace; and that I would lie if I said I didn’t want to keep looking at you until the world dies)

You are kind, endangered, and vague - an anomaly compared to others - and I care that you care about the discarded, the underdogs, the sad.

I care about you because you feel whole in a way only the damaged feel (whole). You are comprehensive.

I care about you because you remind me of everything I used to love (the act of loving, prosthetic memory; endearment).

I care about you because you contain the landscapes you find necessary - the mountains, the water - the way Whitman owned the rooftops of this world. (I love everything)

I care about you in a way that bends me around obstacles like sound waves bend around corners.

I care about you despite rumors to the contrary (and the pettiness of the just), in a way that reminds me that I am alive, still human, and very, very sad.

I care about you. This is the reason.