Junior Clemons

51.
When someone you have loved does something terrible it doesn’t mean you never loved them. It doesn’t mean they won’t again.

52.
And then you put all the blackberries in your mouth.

I will use my turn to describe what I know about your naming conventions. The way that they exist in perpetuity when I am separated from them or how when they are halved they just continue to be themselves, taking up space. And maybe I know too much about them; the animal, moving thing. Because when I think about them, I feel like I am waiting for something, but I am waiting for nothing.

I have learned more than one way to describe the cherry blossom / we have all accomplished something unnecessary.

53.
Yes. I understand and I wish to continue

In a home that is seemingly always someone else’s an existence is named and instantly remembered for no good reason. I wish you luck but think, “It is spring when the birds die for no good reason and the inverse is also true.” And when I am gone nothing will change. Oh my god the circumstances for remembering a forgotten person differ a great deal. “I need you to promise me that nothing will change.” No. That doesn’t sound quite like me—but it is exactly what I am meaning.

It is not long from me to you; a bridge, a bridge, a bridge—a succession of bridges but the distance for you to reach me is impossible in scope I think. Though in the absence of bridges would you forgive me for retreating back to ‘nature,’ which I mean in the smooth easy way. I pass some jasmine on the street and want to be buried in the feeling, you wonder where I am and I am where I am supposed to be.

It’s raining now and when you lower your head it's as if it still hasn’t rained in California. Everything seems lit up but there are no people. And when it is dark at night will I still look blue to you? I know the doorway is a different matter – which I ruined when I didn’t mean to ruin anything at all.

You are thinking, “I want the rim! I want the rim!” and when I look at you I can sense it; the desire for the “rim,” the “boundary,” the “precipice,” the “ridge.” Did it occur that if one considered oneself the cliff they would take on its character – how many times would we walk over the edge of our selves for another person? Infinite times if the circumstances were correct, I think.

You ask me, “what is it like to be alive that way?” Imagine being some place not knowing but knowing of. You just approximate the feeling. A half mauled thing.

64.
When I transfer the bees from my body to your body:

65.
I want to climb a tree. There is a ghost that asks me for sweets. In the backyard nothing grows; there is a small shelter. We pretend to have a swing.

Junior Clemons received an M.F.A. in Writing from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. His book, So Many Mountains But This One Specifically, is currently available from Carville Annex Press. He was born, lives, works and writes in San Diego, CA.