you held my hand in the middle of the night and i felt nothing. no pounding heart, or sweaty palms or head made of static. seven months ago today i would have passed out if you touched me like that. i'm sorry.

the skeletons all have eyes.
and they won’t look at me, they won’t look at you
the skeletons have dark spaces where their mouths should be,
it’s like you and me
did someone hang bouquets from their ribcages?
there are daises sprouting from their spines.
did you put soil at their feet?
there is sun on their backs.
it’s like you and me
the skeletons stand all forgiveness
their bones are unapologetic
it’s honesty, finally, a spine with nothing to hide
you can buy the honesty for twenty bucks at your local halloween store
it comes with fake blood and a liver, and
bones to remind yourself you’re made of guts
bones to remind yourself of your spine
the skeletons are you and me
and they have nothing to do except be.

an inexplicable
and
unknowable
truth

she told me they are the in between stages. when one era of your life is over, but the next hasn't yet begun. it's a place of change, of uncertainty, of questions. of waiting. i thought of god for some reason. maybe the absence of god is actually the presence of him. maybe it's the spaces between words that matter the most. maybe it's the way the piano sounds when it's not being played. maybe truth only makes itself known in the absence of answers. after all, plants do grow in sidewalk cracks.

having a cigarette in the alley
wonderful really
but maybe not as wonderful
if it weren't an excuse
to leave the party

Later
that night,
I
touch my
skin,
the way
that
you did.

What is it about love and belonging? You don’t belong to me, and at the same time, what else could you be but mine? What else could I be but yours? I belong to you. You hold a part of me that no one else can.

is it different?
do you love me?
do our conversations play out
over and over,
in your mind?
and do you also find,
for days after we meet,
that you're completely useless?
rendered incapable of anything
except writing
the same poem
again and again?

what do you do? you keep going. you have to, right? you can’t stop. you just can’t. life itself was created to keep going. it’s in your bones to keep going. there’s a future out there for you - songs waiting to be listened to, words begging to be spoken, beautiful things that demand to be photographed, to be sketched by you, and only you. there are waterfalls out there that exist only for you to jump off of cliffs and into them. there are albums with your name as the songs. and if you truly believe it would not matter if you stayed alive or not, i cannot sit here and convince you that it does matter. i don't have that power. here’s the thing, though - you do. you can find your purpose. i swear to god it’s out there.

fireplaces are made to keep houses warm but mine only filled my house with smoke and coated my clothes with ash. sweaters that look soft are actually itchy when you put them on, and there is such a thing as coffee with too much cream and sugar, i’ve tasted it myself and that sickly sweetness wouldn’t leave my tongue for months and months and months until the flowers started blooming again. thanksgiving is a holiday without presents. and when i was using my fists to punch holes in the walls i realized that rooms aren’t actually rooms they’re just four walls filled with air, and that i need something to ground me.

new beginnings. correct beginnings. things that were supposed to end. a perfect last sentence, a book with no desire to be reread. reshoveling snow off my driveway, rewinding to the time and place it fell from the sky, lighter than rain and about as heavy as your heart.

honesty.

for when shovels give way to snow plows. for when it all freezes over. for when it thaws, and then begins to decay. for when the flowers grow in the sidewalk cracks, the ones that no one bothered to mend. for spring. for that color red, the most accurate one there is. the one you can hear. the one that only shows up in sunsets and tubes of paint. for the day you fell out of love with her.

tie a rope around my heart and pull it from the west coast to the east and when you find out whether or not there’s enough rope to stretch across the states, send me a text letting me know you got home okay

last saturday, the sky turned a shade of orange so deep it made me want to feel something again. it’s december and the windows on my car are frosting over, and there are clouds out there that are so red they look like the end of the world. do you know that somewhere far away, flowers are blooming? some sunsets are pink for a reason. i don’t know what that reason is, but maybe if i keep singing to the sky like this i can find it.