Back Wash or Boys Who Know Their Poetry

Today
You told me that sometimes after you meet
Someone New
You want to go to the bathroom and scream
And scream
Till you cannot breathe.

I didn't know how to respond, so I told you that it was okay.
It was okay to vomit a steady colour of
Grey-green-black
Conversation that hurt you so much
In all its perfunctoriness
That you would rather claw your nails
Into your fist
And leave five little unformed moons each
Than meet someone new again.

I meant it was okay to see the world
Through infrared
Broken lens
Half-formed sentences
And expect every word to unfurl into your lap
Revealing something else

And don't you tell me
That that is beauty.

I meant that when they diagnose us with
Idealism
It isn't equivalent to a report reading O negative.

Today
I meant to tell you
That conversation is back wash
A less-acceptable form of intimacy
But if you exchanged the image of two people
Drinking the same poison
With two oceans meeting and twisting
And breaking
Like two tongues
Meeting and twisting
And breaking
Apart
You'd realize conversation is intimacy made naked.

You scream because you want to unleash
Into an ocean that will drink you in
And accept your back wash being
And for the eons of extended metaphor-shaped oceans you can see
Everyone is screaming
Their grey-green-black disgust
Silently.

I meant to tell you
That you learnt your poetry
Before your tongue could move around your ABCs
And your screams are synchronized to
Play and pause at every halted heartbeat.

And don't you tell me
That that isn't beauty.

I meant that when they diagnose us with
Idealism
It isn't equivalent to a report reading HIV.