If I am but a puppet,

i am made of wooden limb and teabag herb

and the empty coffee mug in the morning, vanilla perfume, the snow-covered driveway

and the dirty kitchen floors

and Fate or God or some omnipotent universal force moves my limbs for me,

if i am a puppet then i am your puppet

i’m not your future wife and you are not mine; in truth i think i love you more

i never knew for sure if this bloody shrink-wrapped heart belonged to me

I’m grateful that they pulled my strings helplessly toward yours.

But if there is no God,

i have not believed in a god since i was twelve, kneeling before the great wooden stage,

young and bored and intrigued by the possibility of a love which wasn’t taught

when i was sixteen i had, briefly, an imaginary wife;

i killed her off, the death a laptop slammed guiltily shut, afraid i might begin to hate the

feeling of his arms, and hands, and bare boy-chest

no Greater Plan,

in hindsight perhaps i just love reminiscence

i will miss these evenings come july –

the dusty cement floor of the garage; the joints passed between warm fingers, the spit

on the roach a secondary kiss

i believe i was born helpless

and I am nothing more than a collection of conscious molecules in the infinite yet mindless void,

(you peer over the couch, wine glass in hand)

then I’m glad that pure chance,

(you are an example of love without thought)

blind movement,

(it is a birthday party and you are quiet and i am given no warning that in two years we will be laughing on the floor and i’ll feel that i love you more than i could ever love my imaginary wife)

has gotten me here, in this kitchen, with you.

(if it wasn’t going to be jesus it was going to be you)

I don’t need to understand anything more about it.