I'm sorry if I fell in love with you too fast.
But it was mesmerizing
The way that you
Took your pure sincerity
And made me feel
A little more whole

I'm sorry if I fell in love with you too fast.
But how could I not
Immediately attach to someone,
Who saw something in me
That I didn't never believed
was there?

I'm sorry if I fell in love with you too fast.
But when I told you,
I was damaged,
And lost,
And you should've left right then,
You made a home for me
In your arms,
And all I'd ever wanted was a home.

I'm sorry if I fell in love with you too fast.
But you whispered sweet words,
And looked at me the way
The sun looks at the moon
In that moment before
They're forced apart

I'm sorry I fell in love with you too fast.
Because you deserve more
than a ghost of a girl
With nothing more than
naive optimism
And broken butterfly wings
In her flickering soul.


And that's all I have to give you.

Dear Moon,

You looked beautiful tonight.
The kind of beauty
That grabs all eyes
and insists that they pay you attention.

But moon,
tell me,
are you lonely up there?
The infinity of stars that lay
scattered in your presence,
seem as if they could be pleasant company,
but is it all an illusion?

The stars trick the foolish
into thinking that they are in your
constant amity.
That’s what it looks like to us, Moon.
But those stars have never uttered one word to you
have they?
Immeasurable distances
make conversing quite difficult,
I would imagine.

Are you sad, Moon?
Is it distressing, Luna,
that us,
the ignorant,
believe that just because
our eyes see the stars in a way that
makes us believe they are near to you,
that you are not hurting?

Child of the night
who lives solitarily.
Do you weep?
Do you shed tears that we mistake
for beauty against the vast night sky?

Daughter of the dark,
who graces all with her
entrancing despondency,
Was there ever a time when you
had hope that somebody,
anybody
would save you from your fate?

Do you feel forsaken my love?
What have you done, Moon,
that would condemn you to this
paradoxically poetic reality?
You didn’t want this.
You only wanted to shed awe upon us,
and light the path home when it got
too dark.
And what have you gotten in return?

Isolation.

I don't want to hate daisies.
I love daisies.
I love daisies so much they might even be my favorite flower.
And I don't want to hate daisies.

But I have to hate daisies.
I have to hate daisies because I was stupid enough
To let myself fall in love.
And I was stupid enough
To let myself fall in love,
Before I looked where I would land.
And before I could even shut my eyes
I was laying naked on the ground
With a spinal fracture and
Bullet holes in my chest.

And I didn't  know how to continue living,
feeling the breeze that would've given you tiny goosebumps, and made you fold your arms across you chest, whistle through your exit wounds.
Hearing it whisper your name every time I blink my eyes.

So I went and I broke my last promise to you.
And I didn't do it to hurt you.
And I didn't do it because I had a choice.
I did it because I can't get the image of the layers of all the shades of blue in your eyes out of my brain.
And how do you expect me to continue living knowing I'll never feel
The heat radiating off the trees burning in the forrest fire that was the way you kissed me.

And I'll never tell this to you,
But before I ripped out every sane thought in my head that always put the cap back on the pill bottle,
I prayed that if there really is a God up there,
That he would stay with me,
And keep just a gasp of air in my lungs
So that I'd wake up
And maybe
Hopefully
You would be there holding my hand,
And I'd be able to see you smile at me one last time.

But God is just too good at his job I guess,
Because I swallowed those dumb things an hour ago;
50 minutes ago;
Contemplating the probability of the existence of heaven and hell
As I waited for the final words of the book to dissolve into my bloodstream
And to finally, print the all-to-predictable
Ending of the story in relaxed letters of black ink.

I will not be sorry that I don't want to live in a world where I have to fall asleep in the cold air that has seemed to replace the way lullabies played in my chest feeling your arms wrapped around me.

But God is too good at his job. Because the blackness I needed never came over me. And instead of feeling my broken heart slow to shallow beats, and my breaths become as slow as the seconds did in every moment we ever had between me telling you I loved you and waiting for you to say it back,
I only felt nothing.

And I frowned at myself for being relieved at first.
Because in the morning when I lose the temporary escape from every cell in my body screaming for your touch that sleep will bring me, I know I will wish more than anything that my lungs had been idle for hours and that my body was as icy and stiff physically, as my every move will feel, having to function without feeling the air vibrations caused by your laugh.

When I first started writing this half an hour ago, my intent was to express the unexpected paralysis
And comfort
That was flowing too quietly under my skin
And how, while it was only temporary,
I felt almost okay.
I could barely feel the dull ache hanging in my ribcage,
And I felt like maybe I would even genuinely smile again someday.

And I'd always loved gambling
But I'm pushing my luck too far,
And things are starting
to come into focus again.

And I'm racking my brain
Desperately trying to come up with
Something I could do to
That would convince the universe to give me back the privilege of feeling my body temperature increase by a number of degrees that I never bothered it measure due to the electricity that sparked in every atom making up all the bones in my skeletal structure in the high that I got every single time I looked at you.

But the only thing I am able to understand right now,
Is that I'm never going to be able to live a day in my life that I don't wish I had spent with you.
And that I hate daisies
Because they remind me too much of you.

why are you sad?
Should I blame you?
I want to.
I wish so badly that I could point my finger
and truly believe myself when I
curse you for hurting me this way.
Should I blame God?
Why did you let this happen to me?
What the hell are you doing up there?
Why are you sad?
Should I blame destiny?
It was always supposed to end up like this.
HELP ME!
WHY AREN'T YOU HELPING ME?
And the reality that I am to blame for this,
reaches out it's icy cold hands and wraps them around my neck,
choking every last bit of air from my lungs.
WHY ARE YOU SAD?*
I can never escape my own mind.
I'm trapped here forever.
Suffocating.
slowly,

s u f f o c a t i n g

Autumn leaves
Are a trick of the mind.
An illusion of beauty,
That mask the harsh reality
Of what they represent.

Mesmerized by their colors
People mistake them for beauty.

But what are autumn leaves really?

They are leaves
Changing
Inevitably changing
With no control over the matter
Loosing what they once were altogether

And then
When the cold fully encompasses them
And it becomes too much to bare any longer,
The simply fall away,
Completely forgotten by the people who were once
Infatuated with their beauty
But have lost interest now
Because they are no longer
appealing to the eye.

I'd always thought
That when you finally left me
I'd use that pain to write poems
The best ones Id ever written
Because the most passionate pieces of us
Are hurt.
Pain is the emotion we feel the deepest.
And I thought I'd be able to use it
In a way that cleansed me of you
But now that you're gone,
I see I was wrong.
I can't even lift up a pen.
In fact
I think I want to burn every ****
Paper I have scribbled words accross
Trying to describe you to people
Who would never understand.
Now that you're gone
I hate poetry.
I hate metaphors
I hate similes
I HATE THEM BECAUSE YOU YOURSELF ARE THE GREATEST POEM EVER WRITTEN.
And you're gone.

I started having to sleep with a nightlight on again. It just gets too dark at night now that I don't get to see your face anymore. The artificial brightness that is absolutely nothing in comparison to you makes it a little harder to fall asleep but maybe that's the point because the nightmares that play when I do fall under are getting unbearable. I spent $14 on a dream catcher that does nothing to protect me from having to see your god ****** eyes every time I shut mine. And I guess the light makes it better when I wake up from another dream where it almost feels like we are dancing around your kitchen together again, but you of all people should know that I only like to cry in the dark.

I don't know where you are tonight
but the air in my room tonight just feels a little bit heavy
and I'm a little but drunk
and I can't stop listening to the last voicemail you left me
and thinking about how cliche it is that it's you telling me you loved me
and how you always knew I loved cliche things
but my blanket still doesn't feel heavy enough
and the window I left open for you is letting cold air in
and I can't stop wasting my 11:11 wishes on trying to  feel you fall out of love with me like the life draining from a car crash victim instead of the desperation of the lover having to watch from behind the caution tape
Does that make sense?
I haven't been making much sense at all lately
I hope you think of me when you're drunk
I think you at least owe me that
I loved you
I really ******* loved you
I still ******* LOVE YOU
WHERE ARE YOU
I miss you.
All these people are worried about me
I'm fragile I guess I
have to be worried about
They keep telling me that
time heals all wounds
But it still hurts to breathe whenever I smell Indian chai tea
with too much milk
And not quite enough sugar
And I can still see the
scar on my left knee from
Where you scratched me
I got so mad when you did that
I'm sorry I got mad
I'm sorry
I'm just so sorry.

Human nature is inevitable.

We want what we can't have.
And when we see others who have
What it is we desire,
We want to take it.

Human nature is inevitable.

And eventually,

The girl who laughs will no longer grace the room with her lighthearted giggle,

because they took  that from her.

The girl who dreams will no longer have anything to live for,

because they took that from her.

The girl who embraced people with her kindness will be turned to stone,

because they took that from her.

And the girl who did nothing but give love away will no longer feel anything but pain,

Because they took that from her.

Human nature is inevitable.

I once new a boy
Who had eyes like summer.

They were the seductive blue
Of the condemning ocean.

His laugh was the sound
Of safety and warmth
Security and innocence.

His heart was a waterfall
That gave away understanding
And love.

And this boy,
With the Summer eyes
And waterfall core

Met a girl.

Who he thought,
Had eyes like bliss
And a core filled with optimism.

But she was an illusion.
Her picturesque smile
Was only a trick of the mind.

And her core
Was not filled with optimism,
But with the wings of broken butterflies,
And fragments of lost dreams.

And that fall, when he told her he loved her
She told him she loved him too
When in reality,
She had no form of any
Love to give

But even her,
The soul stolen girl
With eyes like a dying fire
Could not bear
To turn his summer eyes
Into those of winter

Walking across a frozen pond
When it begins to crack.

Knowing what will happen,
You fight to run back.

But the foundation you stand on
Is spidering faster than you your feet can carry you

And the ice you seek to flee from
Was not made to be escaped,

But you refuse to succumb to it's commands
Getting back up each time it's slippery surface
Grabs your feet and brings you down
to meet it's cold heartless complexion

And the cold grows more paralyzing with each fall
Making it more difficult to get back to your feet

All the while, in the back of your mind is
The knowledge of the imminent break
That will send you falling into the
Inescapable icy black depths of  numbness

Yet, for a reason unknown to you,
Despite the unavoidable doom you are fated with,
You deny to give up.

And you're not sure whether to call it strength,
Or tragic naïveté.

A day
For every drop of water
There is in the ocean,
Is how many days
I'll love
      You.

the static breaking
the space in which silence travels
but not loud enough for my
ears to hear
over the memory of the childlike
innocence in the laugh you graced
the world with moments ago,
as soon as the atoms of you
leave the company of mine,
ever fiber in my body
that was just on fire with the electricity
produced by your touch lingering on my skin
slows down to a feeling of still numbness
with as much heat as a steady candle flame
instilling within me a feeling of longing
each cell in me, gripped,
crippled, by this aching unwholeness
but in a way that is backed by almost a
lining of hope,
hope in looking forward to knowing that when I see you next
the fire that's gone now,
will be back stronger than ever.
Does that make sense?

I was really sad
for a really long time
And sometimes
I'm still sad
I guess
But what I have learned
Is that no matter what happens
There is always hope.
And that's what kept me here
Was the hope that one day
Flowers would look less gray
And I'd laugh a little more
And everything would turn out ok.

Insanity is scribbled handwriting in a tattered journal
words awkwardly strung together
like pieces of a puzzle that do not fit together
yet still forced together
arranged by someone who finally got tired of
trying to put it together correctly.

Or maybe that’s just life.

we are the dampened muddy leaves
Littering Forrest floors in that
Time that's not quite yet winter
But not quite still fall

We are the pebbles at the bottom
Of an ancient river
Being eaten away at with each
Passing current

We are the spidering cracks
in the ice coating the ground
Inviting some unfortunate stranger
To come lose traction on our surface

We are the veins inside the
Flower stem
Begging for recognition past the
Garish petals who get all the notice

We are nothing
And we are everything

cry in the meadow to
let the lighting bugs
catch your tears
selfless as they are,
knowing the salty manifestations
of those demons climbing up your throat
will put their lights out,
just like it did to you.

It's heavy tonight and every movement feels like a paper cut.
I thought I might be getting a cold but I just keep coughing up broken piano keys. It’d be no use going to the doctor, he’d probably just ask me something sharp like when the last time i felt loved was, or if i still pulled the heads off daisies like i started doing after you left. Jesus I wish you had left. You’re gone but you’re ******* everywhere. Does it get hard to breathe for you too? I’ve realized that missing you comes in two different forms. One is wild. Frantic. The kind that makes me gasp for air and rock back and forth hugging my knees. My mothers seen it enough now that it no longer concerns her. It’s desperate. It’s hysterical. It’s us. But the other is quiet. The other is breathing so steadily that you can hear the absolute silence in my ribcage. God that kind of quiet aches. It just aches and all you can feel is the absence of everything. Of anything. Of you. Of us. There’s never a clean break is there? You can never lose someone and not have jagged edges cutting into your sides every time you try to look at the moon or an old t-shirt or your favorite mug with a chip in the handle. I don’t know why I keep shouting at the sky like there’s a God up there, or like he’d be listening to me even if there was. I guess all I’ve learned from all of this is that sometimes love is just sitting at a bus stop but waving by every one that stops. And it tastes a lot like drinking cough syrup when you’re not even sick.

And that’s us.

People sitting on a bus
All sitting in the same vehicle
Yet complete strangers

The girl who sits in the back
and looks out the window
thinking about selfish escapes
and leaving her demons behind
Trapped in the mortal world

Sits next to

The man who lost his wife
that one cold night when
the roads were icy and he was driving
just a little too fast

Who sits behind

The pretty blonde girl
who is on her way home from
The double shift she worked at her second job
that she needs to pay the bills for her and
the child she wasn't ready to have

Who sits across from

The boy with the piercings
and arms canvases in art
pictures that represent the emotion he felt
when his dad left him.

And if you had to pick just one,
Who would you say had it the worst?

If there's one thing I've learned,
It's that love is real
And it does exist.
And you have no idea
What it is like
Until you're over your head in it.
And there's never really a specific moment
In which you fall in love with someone.
After a while, you just realize that
The way they squeal a little
When they laugh to hard,
Or how they always get  way too many banana peppers on their snadwich,
Or how they jump out from behind a corner and scare you
And laugh hysterically because you screamed,
Even though they knew you would.
Or how their heartbeat sounds when they're holding you in your arms,
Are things that you can't imagine ever living without.

And if you ever went to Subway with another person,
And they didn't ask for extra banana peppers,
It just wouldn't feel right.

And I love you.

My grandmother always used to tell me that July was the best month for a wedding. It was the only month you could count on to not have rain. And she was right, as long as I can remember, not once have I seen rain in July.
It did rain however, that last Wednesday in May you still looked at me like I had stardust in my hair and the amazon river in my eyes. And it also rained, that Thursday in June, when I wrote you the last of many letters I never sent you. And now I'm 2,000 miles from you realizing that even when I was still in the same zipcode, we were galaxies apart. I was stuck on a planet with a very stable climate of a constant downpour, and I don't know where you were, but I do know that it was nowhere near me.

And today marks 30 days I've been dead in the water, calling your name and hoping that wind really never does die. I still don't know much but it has to mean something that it's July and it hasn't stopped raining.

Do you want things to change?**
I should say yes.
I should tell you how
"this is not my destiny"
"I deserve better"
"I want to get better."
I should tell you.
I want to tell you.
I want to think those things.
But in all honesty,
I don't think I want to change,
because if you take away my
sadness
and pain
and hurt,
I don't know who I would be anymore.
So I'm sorry,
No.
I don't want things to change.

The clock keeps ticking and im still bleeding but the paramedics stopped operating right after I started asking for you because they knew I was a goner. These broken teeth taste like piano keys and jesus, why is it so cold in here? Hell isn't real and the punishment for our sins are these tattered lullabies and the photos hidden in the backs of drawers your mother doesn't look in. I met god once and all I remember is feeling the wind whistling through the exit wounds on my back as he tried to muster up the courage to ask if he could *** a cigarette. Nobody will tell me where you are and these fluorescent hospital lights won't cut me a break. I keep burning my mouth on this coffee because I guess I've run out of patience for everything except you. Even though I hope you question it sometimes, I hope you always wear your seatbelt. My nails are bitten and somebody forgot to tell me that the only two options when letting go are to drop it so it shatters, or release it so gently that it aches forever. I'm kicking and screaming but no one will look at me and it might be the painkillers but the only thing I love anymore are the bruises on my legs and jesus christ somebody change this ******* song.

the moon herself could not
find the words to describe you my love

being a self acclaimed poet
I want nothing more than to rewrite you
into beautiful metaphors and verses
until I've used every single word
there is available to use

I want to be able to say that your eyes
felt like the ocean and looked like home
But your eyes are so much more than that my dear

I want to say that your laugh
Is more precious than the diamonds
In my mothers jewelry box
That I dreamed of as a little girl
But your laugh makes the silly rocks
Seem like litter on the street in comparison
To you

I want to be able to say that your arms
Are my shelter in the blizzard of fleeting sanity
That has become my home
But really,
I no longer live in that cold place much at all anymore
Because your arms feel like breathing
And safety

I want to be able to put you in words
But I can't do that because the words would never
No matter how hard they tried
Shine as bright as you

They say the sun is the only star in our solar system.

They've obviously never met you.

when the only thing
illuminating the world
are the stars who live
life times away
and the moon
who gracefully rules
everything beneath her
and the weight on my chest
begins to increase so subtly
until I am being fully crushed underneath it
laying there as the whisps of forgotten dreams
are pushed out of me
and my heart struggles to continue beating
the simple thought of your crystal eyes
returns some feeling into the tips
of my fingers that tingle as humanity
begins to flow within them again
you feel like breathing in a world
that thrives on asphyxiating dreamers

Oblivion
is a blanket.
A cover that protects
from what our souls
subconsciously determine
they can not handle.
We shield ourselves with it's mask,
and cast away what we do not-
can not-
cope with.
It is self preservation in the purest form.
We slip into the comforting embrace of oblivion
and pretend as if the demons outside of it
do not exist.

Darling I must say that I’m

            quite surprised to see you here.

     Not that it’s unlike you to show up unannounced,
and track mud throughout my living room,
     even though I just had the carpet redone.
But how can I yell at you while
                  you’re sitting here
          coughing up bits and pieces of        broken piano keys and tainted silver?

I would ask how they got inside you in the first place,

but I won’t

because I don’t think I would very much like the answer.

But you’re here, on my couch,

making a mess of things just like I taught you how,

and the kettle hasn’t begun to scream yet,
         so let’s talk.
That is what you came here to do isn’t it?

Well maybe I don’t want to talk.
        Did you ever even consider that?
Maybe I don’t want to think about January anymore.
                After all these years,
      after all these frost bitten cheeks and lost sunglasses and nails bitten down to the quick,
maybe I want to get out of this car.


                                   I don’t,
but I can’t very well tell you that now can I?
No, I can’t.

Don’t worry about the bruises on the wall or the shadow in the corner.
      You’re not.
You’re not even looking.

How are you?
Fine.
Nice weather we’ve been having.

     Yeah maybe,
except the air is always so cold that there’s ice in my lungs and it
        never stops being Tuesday.
Don’t just look at me, say something. Or if you won’t, then at least  build a fire.
           No, I’ll do it.
Go lay down,
there’s a space in my bed next to Nostalgia that’s
      probably still warm.
            Just throw the book on the floor.
I can put it away if it means you’ll stay awhile.

Turn the heat down, turn the lights off
                  this is all just temporary.
      We don’t have to talk about the car crash or the window or what’s buried in that yard.
      Focus only on my skin now.
We can think about that night in the pool later,
         when you’ve gone home again and turned up the music so loud          that you can’t hear the gunshots.

I have to say that I’m quite
               disappointed,
      and slightly offended by your
lack of attention to detail.
Don’t you remember
     when you were eight years old,
             all filled with soda pop and sidewalk chalk,

and you won that fish at the state fair for something silly
          like knocking over three milk bottles stacked on each other with
    four tries and a baseball.

Who the hell needs four tries for that?

But you won the fish and made it a home
           in a small glass bowl set on top            
                               of your nightstand.

Four days later while you were at school your mom discovered it floating belly up,
          flushed it down the toilet and rushed out of the house
      coming back twenty minutes later     with a fish similar enough to keep you from noticing
          that anything had changed at all.


Oh well,
     I’ll keep that in it’s wooden box at the back of my closet,
Let you keep your ignorance.
Let you keep your bliss.
    And I will sit quietly in the backseat
                   of your car while you drive,
and watch all the different girls
   get in and out of the passenger seat.

But I will never buckle my seatbelt,
     and always keep the door unlocked

just to see if it will scare you enough to turn around.

i'll sit here alone
and try to decide which is heavier;
my eyelids or my heart.
and while I ponder this decision
even though tears fall from my hollow eyes
stinging my face like acid as they roll
and even though my hands are wrapped
around my stomach so tightly,
they may actually sink through my skin
far enough to touch my spine
and even though these sobs that I'm heaving
as if the light in your smile depended on my lack of oxygen,
are gripping me so tightly, i almost forget what it's like to be able to
breathe.
I will use every last ounce of life in me
to shine a flashlight through my eyes,
so they look a little lighter,
and stitch up the corners of my mouth,
into something that will make you think I'm not dying
and every cell in my body will ******* when you fall for it.

Reaching.
Reaching out my hand
Feeling the cool worn fabric
Of the bed sheets accross from me,
Where I would steal every star in space just to have your body laying there
So that instead of finding
The crushing emptiness that already
Hangs in my ribcage,
Tightening it's chilling grip as gently as such a malevolent force can,
Instead of my finger tips encountering this as I stretch my arm out in the middle of another night I can't stop dreaming of your eyes the last time I ever saw them, I could maybe touch a trace of your existence again. I could feel the crippling weight in my chest be lifted as my grasping fingers grab hold of some piece of you. Any piece of you; your painstakingly bright smile, the light in your heart breakingly blue eyes that I still swear could power the New York skyline as long as you wanted it to, maybe the slow steady beat of your heart that I can still sometimes hear in our favorite song.
Then maybe I could breathe again.

I don't know why I keep writing you letters as if you will ever read them or really understand what they mean. I'm just struggling with the fact that it's two months later and I still know the pattern in your eyes so well I could make a blind man feel like he knew them too. It was supposed to get easier, but all that I feel lessening is my faith in destiny because God never would've let me hold your hand if if wasn't forever he's not that cruel. But my hand is empty and yours is probably in somebody else's. And I seem to be the only one who understands how that is an injustice to the world. I'm starting to wonder if this is some joke I haven't been let in on because it makes no sense why the heavens are not in an uproar watching you forget what my smile looks like.  And I never seem to be able to think of how to end these letters but maybe that's because there is no end, at least for me. It's never going to be over and I'm going to have to live my life with skinned elbows and a broken compass just praying that someday you'll come home.

tainted lungs make for harder breathing
teary eyes make for harder seeing
broken hearts make for harder healing
empty chests make for harder being
lights burn out
people shout
dreams die
and people cry
darkness is contagious
you can not get away from this
and so you sit here and rhyme these words
but dead you'll be before they're ever heard.

Because life is dangerous.

Sit with me on the ridge, to watch the sun come up,
and for a single moment,
gaze at the moon
in a fleeting instant before they are once again forced apart.
And even after they are separated,
you can feel the rays of warmth from her that beat down on the back of your neck.
They rays that whisper old love songs and feelings of wholeness.
And for a minute,
they almost sound as beautiful as the words "
I love you" did
when they escaped your lips

It's 12:06 AM
And I lost you today.

I actually lost you quite a while ago
I guess,
And was just grasping at something
That had disintegrated.

But I really lost you today.

And I can't breathe
Because my veins are currently being flooded with
An infinity of moments
In which I fell in love with you,
Taking up all the room in my blood,
So no oxygen is getting anywhere
At all.

And it's a weird feeling
Not being able to decide if your rapid breathing is being caused by
Your heart completely giving out,
Or your lungs trying to catch up to your running away from every trace of his presence.
Feeling like you were just possessed by
Every demon that ever crept into your bones,
And feeling a relief.

I'm terrified.
Im so terrified of having to
Snip apart the seams that sewed us together.
Every ******* second spent with you being a stitch in the warmest blanket I ever slept in.
And I hate the cold.

And if anyone out there knows, could you please tell me how to not think of him whenever I see the moon.

Every second rings dully in my ears,
and somehow the passing minutes still feel so loud.
Sometimes I think I’m tired,
because my eyelids feel like they weigh more than the dissipating stash of pills I keep in the back of my underwear drawer,
and it requires a real conscious effort to keep them open;
but the only thing I can really feel is this horrible restlessness
leaving claw marks that vandalize the inside of my ribcage.
This thing in my chest - I can’t tune it out. It’s so much louder than everything else. I haven’t been able to hear my heartbeat in so long I
fear I may not have one anymore.
Maybe if you spent half as much time
listening as you do grabbing,
you would’ve noticed that my cold,
clammy, hands still haven’t stopped shaking.
I drowned in the lake that day, you know;
that second Wednesday in June,
and I waited for you to jump in and pull my body out of the water like you said you would
but the water is calm,
and I’m still waiting,
and maybe that’s why all these people talking to me
sound so far away
—distant;
like how things sound when you’re underwater and
the world above just keeps going without you.