Karah Kemmerly

pattinson

in december I watch all thirty-something of his films in two weeks,
ranking them by quality, then haircut: mullet to moppy bangs 

to tousled centerpart. I’m looking for through-lines that don’t exist / some
essential robertism. paranoid eyes? his shirk-back lurch? he puts sunglasses

on in a limo he owns & still he’s totally unsettled. my god, to be
so overt with your anxiety. he’s gonna hurt somebody I think & eventually 

he does. he dresses his dead friends carefully & drops them into space. sings
“pretty girl rock” in the passenger seat clutching a handgun. of course 

it goes off later. next to a chain-link fence, inside the fun house, at the kitchen
table when he’s ankle-deep in flood. I should care more about the harm, 

but watching him, I crave waiting instead: a slow-pony wander across
wyoming, an angry seagull that sits & stares. the moment you recognize disaster 

before it happens & part of you welcomes it. at the ocean I knew I was smitten
& should’ve run but didn’t. when you spend so much time with someone, 

it’s impossible not to fall for them a little. to make them a mirror, I mean.
robbie appears, a spectral warning. plays dead from his boarding school window. 

bites hard into his girlfriend’s wrist & reluctantly loves the taste. I’ve been emailing
this guy recently who’s absolutely terrified of me he tells a GQ reporter. he says he’s got 

a lousy sense of time, that he doesn’t realize how little of it has passed
between messages, but I’m skeptical. not saying he’s a liar, but he clearly 

knows how to act. & if he is lying, I forgive him. sometimes I know a thing
is wrong & so I try it. sometimes I pretend I’m not afraid of what comes next.