what it is. this is abstractions for the purpose of disguise. this is discussions, serious and otherwise. this is love, hurt feelings, doubt, new love, old love, trying to find love, sex and questions, passion, shared perspective, old friends, new friends, confusion piled on uncertainty. this is the start of school, getting up early, drinking coffee, sitting in the bagel shop, watching the bagel girl, explaining how the bagel girl looks like a different person since she cut her hair, is now less intimidating. this is watching nicole, remembering nicole, not really knowing nicole but for drunken seconds on rooftops explaining the birthday, the loss, years ago... this is lovemaking and remaking and unmaking and tying up feelings to heartbreak. this is memory and dreams taking over. this is this moment in front of the computer having come expressly from ordering the new york times and jon newly out-the-door, class but an hour and a bike ride away, the text of biology sitting, unread, on the bed. this is the telling of secrets to those unexpected just to get it out. this is not understanding any motivations for anything at all. this is not wanting to feel adolescent again. this is poems not so late at night explaining, "you have made me seventeen again and all filled up with emptiness." this is "your magic is sighs impressed in heart-wrenching detail and yet your hands and thus your pen, are left in the dark." this is me, "i am losing myself in myself, you have shot the first arrow, cast stones in the pool of my heart and all the while your face has been turned the other way, over your shoulder, asking vultures for their wings." this is the confusion of the poem, "you have left me terrified, unwilling to escape my life, to unravel it." this is the confusion itself, "i am ignorant of these devices, these loves two at once and uneaten sandwiches fallen out of palms." this is trying to figure, amidst all the confusion, the true path and the path most right, the path most me as i am, the path to be taken, and "i am begging for someone to send help: the stars have not yet crashed into my eyes, i am holding them at bay, trying, as hard as I might, to trap them in jars." this is the confusion that comes in attempts to not disclose too much, even to myself.