Gemini (Birthday Song)

It starts with you on a mattress in your parents' old room
Clipping your toenails into the room like the room will fade
And you will move onto other rooms
And you will go to other places

Then the wedding, then the woman passed out
In the driver's seat at the order board at White Castle
We woke her up and she went 'round to the pick-up window
Like she knew exactly where she was

Then I wept with my face in your nightshirt
Trying hard as hell to say 'until death separates us'
Loosening the skin on your breastbone
I painted your nails and you sleep while I write all this down

There was a moth caught in the soapdish laminated in lye
Will you still remember me well
If I don't get to 0-0-5? My dead line Gemini

When we're on different sides of the globe
I thought we'd keep our veins tangled like a pair of mic cables
And if there ain't enough slack to reach
That we'd solder them together, 'cross oceans they'd stretch

Our faces reflected in separate windshields
And all our body hair pricked up in elephant eyelash
Should we be tempted by thief or by saint
It seems I leave and you stay to crowd the cage and curse

But don't regret the done dirt
There is no life plan set
You just swallow the coal and follow your breath until death
Now even if the will to sleep persists
I can't cause a harsh cloth, it grazes my blisters

There was a moth caught in the soapdish laminated in lye
Will you still remember me well
If I don't get to 0-0-5? Dead line Gemini

Today I fell asleep in a bath of hair
Hair that once sprouted from my own white wet chalk follicles
I swallow a coal and follow my breath
And I did it with the grapefruit soap, thinking of you
Bathed, shaved, and oiled, your legs are two skinny dolphins swimming
Between the mattress and the layers of bedding
Turning in your drug-dry sleep

When I ask you to kiss my pulse
You offer to start the shower
I want a verb and you give me a noun
What do you dream up while I tongue you down?

There was a moth caught in the soapdish laminated in lye
Will you still remember me well
If I don't get to 0-0-5? Dead line Gemini

You know my build
You know my size
The degree to which my eyes are astigmatic