Not Up for Discussion by Adrian Belmes

Not Up for Discussion

“Did you hear?”
“I did, I’m sorry.”

What haunts is not what I had told you then:
A train-ride is eight hours long
when it makes no stops until its destination.
What haunts is that you trusted me.
                                          You don’t just cry in front of anyone.
                                          Boys don’t just cry in front of anyone.

I didn’t put you onto drugs,
               (“I did, I’m sorry.”)
but I’m the only man that you permitted
to place the extracts of our evil flowers
underneath your tongue
               (the same that I had once prescribed
               from my garage and high upon the hill
               where all the marigolds had bloomed
               but since were taken down).

You’ve known me on the kitchen floor,
discovering rainbows in the dishes
and how Copernicus was thirty-two.
All’s fair: you threw up twice inside my sink,
                                                  another in my bath,
and once, the carpet, that was never cleaned
until I left that house and you within it.

The next time, I promised that I’d walk you through it.
The next time,
The next time,
The next

“He’s out of our hands.”
“Yeah. I’m done.”
              I don’t feel guilty.     
              (I do.)

A walkthrough is not a tomb.
                            It is confession,
but I am no guide, and what I gave was not communion:
I told our brother that we never talked
                     when I consoled him on the phone the Monday after.
“You know how they say there’s a time before and a time after?
                                                        I think I’ve just found the time after.”

“Did you hear?”

He said, she said.
He did, he didn’t, he says he didn’t.
                   She kissed 12 guys one night in Florida.
She says she kissed 12 guys one night in Florida.
                                               We don’t talk about that.
                                                We don’t.
                                                We just don’t.

“What did you do?”
“I don’t remember. I promise.”

                                                     We don’t talk about that.

Was I supposed to know?
Was it the time you pushed
me to the floor, held
me down, until
my then-wife came
and pushed you off?
I laughed,
put you to bed onto the mattress
because your discomfort was second to mine.
I’d rather believe you were a good person.
let you fuck her one Friday in June.
than admit I made a bad choice.

(“I don’t remember. I promise.”)

We didn’t see the leak until it was too late
and all the air had vanished overnight.

(“Yeah, I’m done.”)

I drove you to the station in the morning.

“This stays between us?”
“I’m not gonna tell him we talked.”

I promise you drugs.
               I never see you again.

I don’t feel guilty. I do.
               I never see you again.

​

Adrian Belmes is a Jewish Ukrainian poet and book artist residing currently in San Diego. He is a senior editor for Fiction International, editor in chief of Badlung Press, and vice president of State Zine Collective. He has been previously published in SOFT CARTEL, Philosophical Idiot, and elsewhere. You can find him at adrianbelmes.com or @adrian_belmes.  

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