Story of My Life by Jameson Fitzpatrick

Story of My Life

 

Two desires, like twins I tend to:

 

the one to be

and the other to hold.

 

The first looks like envy,

when the brunette in cowboy boots cycles past

smoking a cigarette, her hair in a French braid.

 

She isn’t sweating

like I am, through my shirt for the third time today.

 

She doesn’t hurry.

 

Or later, in the park

where I am killing time, when the woman

on rollerblades shows me the shape

 

of what I sit on the edge of,

the same cobbled circle as always.

 

Looping and looping in a short dress.

Pixie cut. Perfect port de bras.

Her own music in her ears.

 

I read a book about a woman

who loves a man.

I relate. My own music.

 

Now the other desire cries out,

as though I can only neglect him for so long—

 

And there he is, this time

taking the form of a skateboarder

so lithe and dark-haired it hurts to look at him

 

though of course I can’t stop,

knowing I’ll have to go eventually, or he will,

and then I may never again have the pleasure

 

of looking at him. The pain I mean.

In my teeth.

 

I think of an Elaine Scarry line—

“The first demand of beauty is to keep looking”—

 

but when I go to look it up later, it’s not there.

 

In fact, I wrote it, in my notes

on the book where I thought I’d find it,

the one about beauty and justice and error.

 

He’s not very good.

At skateboarding I mean:

 

he can’t quite clear

the base of the statue that’s drawn him here

and keeps tumbling away from his board.

 

Scarry says the first demand of beauty is replication.

 

I’ve already written this poem,

in this park, though it was a different statue

and a different man.

 

Is desire without pain possible?

Is desire possible without pain?

 

Really, I want to know.

I want to stop writing this poem.

I want him to say Yes.

 

And how graceful she is, avoiding his orphaned board

as it rolls her way.