Jungleheart

You said you were happiest
in my tree eating coconuts
tossing peanuts at passersby
I thought I could roll summer back
the lies, not the bananas

didn’t care you’d been peeling your layers
for the ogling of withered men
a bit of fantasy play
you might be the naughty schoolteacher

Or even a monkey
Like the afternoon we trysted
In the parc de la Villette
you turned somersaults
I lifted you like a ballerina

the summer began when we vowed
not to make love and failed
ended when you left but I extracted
a promise: one day we’d fly a kite

Then maybe I will summon my courage
ask you to build a pyramid of coconuts
something new, stable if we placed them lovingly
coconut by coconut

These nights I scribble monkey stories
roll back time to our summer together
how tight you gripped me when we fell asleep
how sweet it was to wake up like that

Ok, so we’ve committed to building a pyramid of coconuts, but the only way forward is to stop touching each other immediately. So far we only have two coconuts – and that ain’t a pyramid, especially since Jungleheart says the first one might not count since she spent half the time as we strolled through that cemetery thinking about stabbing me and hiding my body in an old tomb.

So we met at Les Halles, where she threatened to shit in her hand and throw it at me – just like the old days. I threatened to dodge. Instead we weaved through the crowd – she is a nimble monkey, I am a wall of wool. The film was a film within a film within a film about zombies. She told me even my casual zombie bite after the movie was borderline crossing the line – we really don’t touch anymore.

Or maybe we do, with little arm pats and too much eye contact and I don’t think either of us can forget the way it was. How do you explain to someone that having sex with them helped you find religion? Convinced you there were cosmic forces bigger than us at play? And sometimes when we do it right and love each other fiercely enough, we can be a conduit of energies? That she taught me how insane it is to settle for anything less than complete mutual obsession – the crackheads look at our love in envy and smash their pipes in the gutter.

We walked along the Seine not touching, and eating ice cream. She tells me I’m the world’s worst flirt – or is it the best – anyway, it’s when you flirt constantly, with everyone, man or woman, always. There are other things she says just to hurt me – I tell her that’s fine until the day it isn’t.

Mostly I worry about the pyramid of coconuts. Are we placing the coconuts properly? Are the coconuts well chosen, or a bit soft and rotten? She never did want to fly the kite, maybe because that’s date shit, that’s fall in love shit, and we’re well past that point now, aren’t we? Just two friends who love each other and aren’t allowed to touch.

At the end of the evening, a breach – we brush cheeks in the French style, and I see all her faces at once: loving, hating, cumming, eating, smiling, laughing, sleeping, kissing, crying, eyes closed, eyes bright, eyes curious; she brings my hedgehog puppet to life on her arm. It’s the kind of goodbye that goes on too long not touching! She takes the escalator down into the metro, but we look back for that second glance, and there she is, Jungleheart.

New chapter, new poem, new love, pure flame. She is half phoenix and half Icarus plummeting through life. Has a strict, “no talking to your exes” policy which I thought was harsher than I could endure and if I had more courage I might have said: fuck this, I gotta preserve that single glittering thread connecting Jungleheart and I, not to mention the sad pyramid of coconuts, a single layer deep, and missing its crown.

Yesterday, I told my beloved it was my happiest day, and all we did was hold each other. Still I was tempted to respond to Jungleheart’s “hey how you doing how was your summer?” with the suggestion of coffee and a chat so that the pyramid might keep growing, but now my lover is enflamed, furious, and I am abandoned and lonely and crying my face off, had to stop washing the dishes three times to sob like I was a kid again.

Funny thing is I hadn’t even responded to Jungleheart, just asked my lover if it was OK if I had the chat, because it still grieves me how things went down, because there is a single thread that still connects us, not to mention the pyramid of coconuts, and my lover sensed all this in the uncanny way of the wise. It was a “red flag” and a better partner than me would have been crueler to himself and spared her: snip the thread and be done.

It terrified me how I couldn’t stop crying. It terrified me how much I could care about someone, that yesterday had been my happiest day. Finally, I walked along the canal to write this and realized I’d never loved someone so much, but I did feel it once, dear Jungleheart, how tight you gripped me when we fell asleep.

________

Matt Jones is the prose editor of Paris Lit Up. His first novel, DRONES, is forthcoming from TouchPoint Press.