the role gravity plays when boiling potatoes with a casual partner

I.

She poured enough salt
to taste like the sea
and acted like a host
of a show on TV.

He laid down his head
on the blue formica,
stared at her bottom
covered in lycra

and that was when all notions of form was lost

II.

(he
breathed in when
she
exhaled)

what do you think about gravity he asked

she checked on her lamb, checked on the potatoes, checked on the ingredients
he checked out the nape of her neck, he checked out that sliver of muscle that connected her lower jaw to her collarbone and loved how it moved adjacent to the mere swivel of her head

do you remember thriller that michael jackson song, she asked .

he nodded his head.

well when i was younger that music video scared the living daylights out of me: the zombies surrounding that girl, vincent price's cold, classy composed voice calculatedly timbred to elicit suspense, michael jackson's eyes -- especially michael's eyes. that part where he reassures his girl how everything's alright and then he turns around to smile with these terrible evil soulless eyes. they were freeze-framed, vincent price's cackle in the background. it creeped the hell out of me, i couldn't even hear that song when we went shopping at safeway without holding on tight to my mom. i would just think about how he had his arm comfortably around his girl but revealing to the world he was really a monster -- oh my god i just described my last three relationships.

they both laughed.

i watched again last night, anticipating that fear to come back. but all i got was this campy hokey music video. what was scary was michael's hair and nose and skin and how he would 25 years away from being 25,000 times weirder than that. if he spoke indian it would've been a bollywood horror film

he smiled,

then replied

yeah it makes me wonder how someone in today's world, like britney spears, can cope with the scrutiny of our open jaws and bewildered eyes (while thriving off us too) for the next 25 years. how irrelevant she'll feel when she might be irrelevant to people she would never meet or wouldn't even like standing in line with at the atm.

if that's how she'll be, she said, then she'd lack gravity. because thriller last week is what i think about gravity -- the relief in knowing what's worth it and what isn't even there. our mind is stronger than the weight an ant can carry; it recieves information and sends out orders accordingly. when it's hot, we sweat to balance the heat. when i touch this boiling pot (she pointed to the potatoes) without gloves the heat tells my brain to pull back before i get badly burned, when something scares me as a child it stores that memory, that feeling so it will elicit the response at the thought of it. but when reality arrives, after time, and you see that what frightened you was so long ago was just this goofy thing, then your brain officially writes over your memory with a new one.

gravity has no ETA or waiting period, it waits for you. it waits for you an apple to fall off its branch, it waits for my breasts to decide when it doesn't want to be as firm. and if you refuse to acknowledge it then it's your prerogative, but perception isn't gravity.

he smiled.

the potatoes were finally cooked mixed with dijon mustard celery sour cream worcestishire sauce roasted hazelnuts and orange juice. he sprinkled salt onto it grounded pepper on top of it. they agreed it tasted good though she was humble and said it was alright

is it pronounced, war-shester, he asked.

when i was a kid, i pronounced it woos-est-shire but i'm sure that's wrong.

III.

when they finished their food, they both let out a sigh.
when they were in bed, they both moaned and made ugly faces.
when they finished their session, they both let out a sigh

He picked himself up
got a roach from her desk
and watched her sleep soundly,
the rise and fall of her chest.

Grabbed himself a plate
and got off the stool,
took a walk outside,
sat at the complex's pool.

Lit the roach and saw his reflection
between the leaves in the chlorinated water.
Looked where the leaves came from up above,
looked at the branches that teetered and tottered.

Looked beyond the trees
and saw a bird --
behind was sky, was stars --
looked while it dropped a turd

if he looked harder
if he looked beyond,
he thought he'd
see infinity (because
infinity is where he'd want to be)

and in infinity, he'd say
(he rolled another j)

about gravity, i think you find it romantic.

not so much romance, she would say.
romance is a man fuckiung before dying for
what he believes in. gravity
is the resonance hours after
the orgasm, hours before his death.

that sounds romantic, he said.

because you're a romantic, she answered.

no i'm not, i'm just the fuck buddy.

he would smile saying that and she
would smile back. he had to think
before she smiled and he wondered
if she did the same thing, too.

he continued,

this is what i think about gravity, and
i don't disagree with what you think --
about gravity and me being a romantic.

we can both draw a dog,
yours might have spots, mine
will have long fingernails and
neither of us will be wrong.

we'll both have drawn four legs
and a nose that looks like a
bloated upside-down "W".
our idea of a dog is there,
just different interpolations.

she laughed, telling him her
dog's nose would a circle at the
tip of a long hotdoggish feature.
it'd be a weiner dog, she said.

well, maybe you'd be wrong, he
joked.

just kidding.

she shook her head,
then nodded it.
go on, she said.

true, he continued, it's
been established i'm a romantic,
a manic, a hopeless rote manic.

romance and love aren't
mutually exclusive. romance
and wanting to fuck aren't

diametrically opposed to
each other. romantics find
the seriousness of water boiling

romantics find the whimsy
layered underneath a
mother's funeral,

they find contentment extra-
ordinary in a monogamous
relationship, find the

lust enthralling in a casual
encounter. from what you said
you think gravity is --

and by the way i wish i came up
with an answer like yours --
gravity is the equilibrium

in keeping a romantic grounded,
and putting a romantic in all of us.
she interrupted, it attempts to at least.

yeah, attempt, i'm sorry.

i don't think i'm a romantic, my
heart's not on my sleeve, i see
water boiling and i think

100 degrees celsius, i see my
mom's funeral and all i could
think of was if i wasn't mourning

enough or too much out of respect
for my mom. the thing is, gravity
requires my sentimental side to

come out for balance, right. there
was a pregnant pause and she
answered; well it doesn't

require anything. it is just there,
inert. whatever floats up top was
you all along. (he choked on a toke,

his cough arrhythmic and isolated
from the area surrounding him)
when you asked me to buy a

sack of potatoes, he asked, was that
gravity? it wasn't part of our agreement
that we cooked for each other or do

boyfriend/girlfriend things. the way i
felt when you were talking about watching
Thriller when you were younger, was that

gravity? me listening to you, seeing your
depth go over me like shade on a hot
day. maybe gravity has allowed us

to get comfortable when all we looked
for was convenience, or maybe i'm the
only one who feels that way. what i'm

trying to say is that your idea of gravity
is broad, while mine is more specific. if
you asked a physicist about gravity

he would discuss the theory of relativity
or newton's theory of gravitation. if you
ask a high school student he'd give you

a textbook definition that shows its
responsibility of keeping the earth and
the planets around the sun. but mine

is more specific. when i'm not with you
this gravity feels like quicksand. gravity
is many things to many people, determined

by many things for many people. this is gravity
for me, determined by me. if i can look into
the future, which i can't, many paths

take us to where we shouldn't be and many
of the factors that existed before this evening,
before potatoes and before we discussed gravity,

foreshadowed that. our agreement is on
the verge of being null and void on account
of gravity. how do you feel about that that?

IV.

He stared at the stars.
It was a long time since he looked
carefully. He kept his eyes at earth's ceiling,
knowing he won't know when
he'd enjoy it again.

She came out, looking for him
(when he exhaled, she inhaled)
I wish I knew constellations, he said.
She looked up and smiled.
There's orion, she said. My favorite

You can see it because of those three
stars aligned, Orion's belt.

He squinted at the sky. I see
it, he said. They looked at it together.

about gravity, she said.
i think you find it romantic.

i want to be there from the beginning

i want to be there from the beginning.
i wouldn't care if it was big bang or
adam figuring out if being inside eve
was the greatest thing ever.
i wouldn't tell anyone that i was there.
i want to be part of the genesis of feeling.

i want to be there when a man baked bread
for the first time, i want to see his reaction
to the smell, the taste. i want to see how
he even thought of how yeast would rise
and how moist and soft bread would feel
on his tongue. i wouldn't even intrude,
i just want to see and smell a smell in front of
someone who never smelled that smell
and see how he'd respond to something
some people take for granted.

i want to be there when you decided
that the idea of feeling sad was an idea
that you would not be a part of.
i would like to hear your parents
listening to some guy playing piano
and the television being background
for everything else you considered background.
and as much as i would like to tell you that
everyone's emotion is important and worth
feeling, regardless of whether it makes you
want to ignore dinner for philip larkin,

i would stay quiet. i would not try to
deduce or figure out why you
acted in the way you acted.

i would sit there, watching the
lines on your face grow into
the person i met and felt

because i would never
time travel to change history,
or to figure out the psychology
of humanity. i would just like to see
something beautiful.