Most people have had a moment where they are just living their life, and then suddenly their nose picks up on something and they are brought back in time. You walk into a restaurant and a smell takes you back to being a child on Christmas morning in your grandmas kitchen. Maybe you go to a new friends house and their hand soap brings you back to moments that you haven't thought of in years.
    This is such a strong phenomenon that most people can give you an example of, and it's very interesting. Scientists believe that this is such, because the parts of the brain related to memory, and emotional memories specifically, are directly connected to the parts that decipher our olfactory senses. These associative memories are often very vivid and visceral, because the connections are so strong and direct within the brain.
   I have burned every candle we bought together down to the end, partially because I want to forget you, and partially because I'd do anything to be taken back in time to the way things were for just a second.
  Its actually been weeks since I threw the last one out. If you're wondering, it didn't work. I wasn't brought back to better times. But as the last breath of life burned from the wick in the cinnamon apple candle you loved, I smiled.
   Its time for me to buy new candles, and I am so excited.

And just like that,

almost as if on cue,

The sun is out, shining bright,

The storm clouds, for now,

Are tucked safely into the wings,

Of someone else's scene,

In someone else's play.

Its been raining for days,

The clouds seem spiteful,

Like they've held it in for too long,

And now they're lashing out,

Seething,

Bursting,

The ground around me,

Oversaturated into a swampy muck,

Each step I take,

Leaves the mud gasping in my footprints.

Ive stopped making poems and art out of everyone I encounter beyond the surface.

I’ve stopped making myself a Martyr to my own feelings,

I’ve stopped forcing gorgeous jewels upon the crown of regular people.

I will do my best to tread lightly,

Except when you don't want me to.

I will try to handle you with care,

If you do the same.


I will do my best to keep my balance,

And not lean too far in.

Unless you're leaning too,

Then I'll meet you halfway;



I promise.

I think of you less now, if you could believe that.

I still see you in poetry and in music and in art and the little habits I learned from you, and in food and in snails,

The list goes on but it really does happen less often now, and when it does im much less confused. Much more capable.

When this was all very fresh a friend of mine told me a day would come where, there wouldn't be the same pain anymore. Like an old bruise fading from a deep purple to a sickly yellow. Still tender and ugly, but dull and familiar.
    And that the dulling of that pain, the yellowing of that bruise as it heals comes with its own painful realization. The realization that we've grown so far apart from each other I don't even hurt for you anymore. At least not the same.

I sit,
anxious and tense as a squeezed spring.
Nervously checking my phone awaiting that buzz.
As the minutes tick bye my chest is ratchet strapped a tad bit tighter.
I've been on paths like this before, in similar forests, and the deja vu feeling im experiencing is giving me PTSD.

I’m just a symptom of your untreated ADHD,

You text me when you need a pick-me-up,

When you’ve hit another low,

When you decide not to take your adderal,

Those are the times I come to mind,

And the in the same breathe,

I’ve completely cleared from it,

The ups and downs give me vertigo,

Tummy twisters like I’d get as a kid,

And that same feeling of being adrift.

You prepared us a bowl of the tender juicy flesh,

Wet to the touch and the warmest orange hue,

I've always enjoyed cantaloupe, even as a kid it was a favorite of mine.

We agreed this was one of the best either of us had ever had and ate each morsel.

Each chunk melting in my mouth as if willingly being eaten.

The way id willingly melt in your mouth if it was your wish,

I'll never look at cantaloupe the same.

My tongue is covered in scars,
Can you feel them when we kiss?
Even then, do you understand why they exist?
Almost daily there are words whos lives got cut short before they started,
The potential of some being far more vast than any aborted fetus or abandoned plans. The weight they carried stays on my tongue making speech harder with each slain saying. Making laughing a workout. And making kissing interpretive dance,
Me trying to tell if you can read Braille well enough to read what wasbt said. You trying to decide if this is still worth it, if this, like your major, is what you ACTUALLY wanted.

The time will come when it will all make sense, and the picture will be clearer.
Till then sit tight, breathe deep and keep your  limbs inside the ride.

There's light at the end of the tunnel.

After all this time in the dark, my mind might be playing tricks on me.

The golden glow that, even from this distance seems so warm and clean,

could very well be a mirage.

Real or fake it's beautiful,

And im running as fast as I can in that direction.

See you on the other side.

In my past my fears have gotten the best of me on occasion, but I swear I would face all my fears for you, if you gave me the chance.

Whatever they say about loving stuff and letting it go is wildly subjective and skewed into the letting-goers' favor.
      
      When someone's love and the love you have for them is your world, and they simply let you go, how can you ever come back?

Still I agree though, with what they say about living and loving. Life will have hard times regardless, so fill the other times with love. It will always be better to have lived and loved than to not have, no matter how vulnerable it leaves you each and every time.

To tell the truth im absolutely miserable and not worthy of a shred of pity.

Caught up in the fever you gave me,


I'm no good at playing it cool,



Maybe you could teach me?

I remember when I first felt the warmth of your brain;
The illuminating light that came from those pulsing electric tendrils of grey matter and the utter comfortability I felt when yours collided with mine and tiny nuclear bombs went off all over my skin leaving me with goosebumps everytime you spoke.
As we lay in fates womb,
Before we were aborted,
I couldnt help but know I wasnt worthy.
I still am not,
Alas,
This is a different life anyway, for a different person.

My mind dresses you in the colors of fall and my heart smiles at the image.
Your dark hair falling down over a rusty orange sweater and the olive skin on your hands peeking out from the sleeves.
I often wonder if maybe I read the whole thing wrong.
That you were as into me as I was into you.
But the night we lay there,
And I lay in awe,
Literally prone to your beauty,
And I built up the gaul to bring my lips to yours and yours sat still,
I felt the wronger.
I felt as though I was treading waters you hadnt mapped,
That this wasnt in your itinerary.
So I backed off,
Shock turned to sorrow,
Sorrow was slain by shame and shame fell to sourness and I stamped out most all the flames around us.
But I kept one and will keep it always,
It burns forever a still image of you,
Smiling, looking up at the night sky,
Random nameless decrepit buildings all around us and a spotlight of warmth and connection and humanity in the middle of it all.

Your cat, she missed me,

You though, clearly much less so,

Good to see you both.

Do you still chase sunsets like we used to?
Do they hit the same?
Or did truly everything get old?

Lately I prefer the sunrise, and the clean slate they offer.
They feel full of the calm I crave so starvingly.
So full of beauty, so full of potential for good things.

In a meadow, capped with canyons on either end,
There Is a spot in a field where the grass stays short for me. A pact between us that each night in my dreams I will read to the meadow, and it in turn stays short and soft for me to rest my head and wake. This place,
Where the day and night see eye to eye through the canyons as the sun and moon trade places,
And a quiet brook babbles to the silvery fish within it fictional stories of adventurers and dragons and tyrannical governments and even a species of fish known to fly,
is the only place that I can be alone.
It's covered in the sweet smell of honey and patchouli during the day, filled with the sounds of bees and wind chimes the trees grew themselves. At night is almost silent, except for the crickets, and the occasional owl, and my melodramatic voice as I read to the tentative flowers blossomed and budded all around me, every creature in earshot paying full attention. There are trees here that love to provide, provided you provide them with a riddle or two. Ive never brought anyone here, to the place where I can be alone. But strangley I want you here,
And thats dangerous.

"Can I at least hug you?"
The question crawled from her throat in a scratchy and pitiful way.
For a split second I realized she was starting to cry.
"If you want, sure"
She wrapped her little arms around me and I left mine at my side. We had had a final farewell hug more than once before this one.
I was always distraught. My world was collapsing. This time when she pulled the rug from under my feet, my world really did collapse. I cried like a child taking his first confused breath, at the top of my lungs and so full of fear and confusion.
  I cried and hurt so much that when this hug finally came, I had hardened over. I couldn't be soft for her anymore She had broken that.
    Her arms dropped from my side and she stepped back, looked at me, silently.
    "Anything else?" I asked.
    "...I don't think so"
    "OK well best of luck in everything you do, see ya around."
And then I turned, walked away, got in my car and drove down the street. I didn't look back at her gate. I drove home, cried some more and probably drank, because I don't remember.
    This is a form of farewell too. You've thrown me aside and its not fair to myself to still have you as a subconscious muse. This will be the last time I write about you in a long long time. If you happen to see this, know that there was nothing I wanted more than for that embrace to last an eternity.
    So there it is, so long, see ya around.

The other day I read an article about how climate scientists were recording a heat wave in Eastern Antarctica unlike anything we've seen before.  The article mentioned certain regions being 50-90 degrees hotter than usual.
Accross the world, Vladimir Putin initiates a "special military operation" wherein he invades Ukraine, and begins killing innocent civilians. The west is on eggshells as to how they should respond. The tension is thick, and the world is watching.
The Amazon burned for almost 9 months straight in 2020, 72,000 Square miles of Australian bushland was scorched by wildfires in 2020, California has seen record amounts of homes destroyed in its own wildfire seasons the past few years.
Amidst it all Harry styles drops his new hit single "as it was" and destroys spotify records. Will Smith is slapping chris rock for a woman who doesn't love him at the oscars. Betty white died, Bob Saget died, DMX died. Kimye split up. Rhianna gets pregnant.
  All of this is happening around us, the world is quite literally falling apart. And there's an image of humanity that I honestly love in my head. Which is us sitting on the edge of it all, playing our favorite songs, watching the end play out. Its beautiful to think that even as the flames lap at our toes, well probably find something to sing about.

When I try to look back,
It all feels like a drunken stupor.

There are still so many strings attaching me to my old life,

I've been writhing and struggling to create enough distance that they finally snap.

Every day there are handful of things, some of them are habits I perpetuate,

That send me straight back down those darkest of mental corridors.

I do everything I can to widen the gap,
But like a piece of gum under a shoe,

The strings just stretch on through the stress.
And leave messes where I walk.

Its funny in the same moment I go from longing so deeply for the past, to stumbling upon a brand new beautiful angle of the shots and im overwhelmed with joy that I've lived the life I have.

I'm not sure if it was the music,
The ****, or the sheer dreamlike joy of it all, that disguised and distracted me from the click-click-click of our coaster cart climbing ever higher.
  Strapped in tight, I had long gotten over my fear and anxiety of the ride we were on.
  After all, we had waited in line for what seemed like years before getting to experience the thrill they all sing about.
  Before I knew it we had reached the top.
We sat there for a brief eternity, appreciating the view, enjoying each other's company. Your hair looked so dark against the blue sky, and my skin felt so warm, in the high-sky breeze. The birds we always watched were practically our peers for just a moment.
  In a thousandth of the time it took to reach the peak, we were halfway through our freefall, all the beauty we were enveloped in, now merely a blur.
  Although at first fear gripped at my mind when my stomach turned as our cart plummeted, it soon gave way to joy, as I slowly realized this was the true ******. These moments of helplessness as we are whipped around each curve and loop, are the parts we climbed that hill for. The parts that end up in songs, and poems.
  The view was great and calm, but the rough parts, the parts that might leave bruises, are the parts that give it meaning.

Its been a year,

and what a year its been.

thinking back on it all, its a dream really.

The skies were clear, the clouds rolled bye slow,

aside from some squalls barely visible from shore,

the sea was calm.

Everything changed for me in the spring.

It was 4 months of the most painful growth I've ever known,

during the brief moments of reprieve Id lay in beds of clovers, the flowers and grass embracing me like old friends.

Then the summer came,
it was hot, and rainy, and the sweat burned my eyes,

The cicadas screamed into the evening as they felt the sun for the fist time all year.

I fell hard and let myself rest. The blood from my hands ran a deep red, a reminder I was only human and the proof I was still so alive.

Jolting awake in the quiet fall mornings felt like the end of a loud heavy metal song.
The sudden and sharp juxtoposition was an unexpected but welcomed moment of quiet.

those sunrises were, crisp and the clouds were nowhere to be found. as the temperatures dropped The world turned an odd cheap sepia hue, like one of those tacky old timey photos you get on a family vacation to tennessee.

Winter seemed to clear away the clutter of it all.

What was so seemingly right and seemingly wrong, crystallized over night, politely frozen in time for me to take careful note of.

The voices of people  I love swarmed my ears as the holidays rolled bye.

what a year its been,

my hair has grown so long,

my smile lines have grown deep,

I can hear the wind picking up outside,

my eyes are open wide,

facing forward, ready for the show,

as the storm rages on.

This year of my life has provided me a bountiful lemon harvest,

My friends and I have gathered the fruit dutifully for the passed few months

I'm proud of the lemonade we've made of them.

From here on out Lemonade will always remind me of these days, scorching hot and full of struggle.

The sweet sensation of quenching your thirst with the fruits of your strife.

Somehow we did it,
We carved out a day, a few moments where it felt like nothing mattered except us, at least to me.
Like time wasn't running out and we weren't 25 year olds and the only thing of any importance was what the other had to say next, at least to me.
Laying in your bed we felt like two grains of sand brought together as they were squeezed through the eye of an hourglass, at least to me.
I don't know how we did it but God I would give anything to do it again.

I wonder what it is to you, just a way to pass the time?

Its a perfect daydream for me.


You lay there asleep, golden in the morning light that was pouring through your windows.

You seemed so Perfect in that moment. I never wanted to look away.

However this goes you should know you've given me peace in ways I could never express.

I moved back home to my hometown this year.

I hadn't realized how long it had been since I could look at the night sky and see the stars so clearly.

Somewhere in there thats the metaphor isn't it, that it took me coming home to navigate these dark times in my life with the clarity I need.

I'll remind myself to keep my head on tight.

To dot my "i"s and cross my "t"s,

To watch my step and mind my manners.

To take it all in.

To ride the wave from crest to crash,

To breathe deep and laugh loud,

To hold me close and have my back.

We used to agree,

We were probably lovers in past lives,

Who knew we would make that a reality

How easily I swell and deflate,
Like the paper bag you breathe in when you start to hyperventilate,

From your touch I catch fire,
From your glance I freeze over,

I should've tried harder,
To keep my composure.

My sandpaper tongue,
How it chews like dried up fat,

The crystalline grass,
How it crunches underfoot,

The paper thin skin,
How it tears like it was pleated,

The rambunctious quiet soul,
And the storm cloud in its wake.

Another gentle let down that feels like a meteor crashing into the earth,

All because I continue to let myself get so excited, and so hopeless.

Like leaning into the curves on a rollercoaster.

Cold stella Artois

Triggers warm thoughts of your face,

How was your cats day?