It's a special time of year when the squirrels land and crunch the leaves beneath them in the next yard over and your dog races towards the fence through a garden of fallen foliage to try to protect his fence.
My thoughts run together like a train when you're stuck at the light and it never seems like it'll be over as the train cars pass slowly in the funeral procession of wasted time just sitting at that god ****** light.
It's a special time of year where you want to be alive, where the minerals inside are finally in stride and no longer collide to invoke another suicide praise the saints and praise the Angels for failed suicide inside my mothers home she cried for nights miles away uncertain of whether or not id finally get it right, my god, I never got it right, I've never gotten anything right, the scars on my wrist tell a story but they don't sing in reverie.

I miss you the way Christmas used to make me feel. In that old, painful longing. There was so much more beyond the tinsel and presents. There was a warmth inside that filled you up with golden apple cider served from a ladle by your mother. I miss you the way you miss your mother. Your brother. I miss you the way that the moon misses the stars, absolutely clueless of what they do, it rises and falls in that same dance routine it's practiced for centuries. I miss you in the way you miss an old sweater. You could bury your nose in to my sweater. I miss you in my sweater, God. And New Years' when you woke me up just in time to kiss. You took pictures of me in your arms in your sleep. Where did those pictures go? I miss you the way you miss the photos on your old computer that you will never get back. You hold on in your head the memory, and you can try to describe it possibly beautifully but never the less you can not experience the original again.
I miss you in the way that a captured whale misses the sea.
How I loved to swim in your seas, you said you loved to roll in my tidal waves, remember the tidal waves, the breathtaking moments of whirling emotion.
I miss you the way my lungs miss smoke. The smoke of the fire in Tennessee late at night surrounded by an open sky of stars. Those same stars, that lonely moon, bury your head in my sweater, I'm sorry, lord, I'm sorry. I miss you the way that my head would miss my body.
A chorus of I'm sorry's
And my aching body
From falling from trees
Trying to get closer to the moon
Because I'm lonely too
I'm sorry we're not cosmonauts
But maybe one day soon
Spilling
Apologies, I'm spilling
I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry

Fall in texas and the air was bittersweet
And the wind tried as much as it could
To alleviate the stale,
Hot air
It's October and in the 90s
I used to think the sun was my ally
Until this summer charred my outsides
Until the river that I loved ran dry
They say never give a name to a pet on a farm in case it dies
Well I named that river and I named it love
And I swam in it and drank it up.

Mutinied from my own ship
Thank goodness I can steer my own life raft
And after all those years of sailing alone
It feels good to have the open sea back
An endless expanse beacons me
No more sirens left in this sea
Just blissful cruising
Away from the lies that were left of me
I am the captain of this wobbly tiny ship
I am the maker of my destiny
I grip the compass that my father made for me
As I float
Aimlessly
As I float
At peace

I used to think you could find love at the bottom of a bottle
So night after night I swam the sea of spirits
So deranged by the last drop that I couldn't remember my own name
The emptiness lived on
It grew like texas wild flowers
Soaked nightly by the miracle of rain, the plight of tears, the taste of blood in my mouth
As my teeth slowly fell out
Morbid decorations for the garden
We once made with our love

I used to think you could find love at the bottom of a bottle
So night after night I swam the sea of spirits
So deranged by the last drop that I couldn't remember my own name
The emptiness lived on
It grew like texas wild flowers
Soaked nightly by the miracle of rain, the plight of tears, the hint of blood
As night after night I lost all my teeth in my dreams

Your jewelry now cast
Set in stasis by wax
In a candle I named "love,"
Where I threw dead flowers
And other sacred artifacts
Just to let the white wax dry
After I blew out its flame
It sits on my dresser
Unlit, but the jewels sparkle just the same
I put all of my Love in to a candle
Just to avoid feeling this pain
This current, this undertow
Of memories of you
By a shore