Where do you go when you can't go home and you don't know the backroads well enough to absentmindedly navigate your way out of your mind?
Can someone show me a map with a route that has the most frequent red lights and stop signs?
What does it mean when it aches to see that every green light you approach won't turn gold?
How does it feel to loathe the silence between you and yourself?
It feels like this.
It feels like flipping an hour glass over and over but the sand is stuck to the top
Like the digital clock on the dash is always seventeen minutes faster at each tick and turn of the tiny green digits
Like the four note church bell chimes at the cemetery forever
Like the CD is scratched and keeps skipping but it only repeats the same line over and over

Home is wherever I'm with you
Home is wherever I'm with you
Home is wherever I'm with you
Home is wherever I'm with you

Like the CD is 80 minutes of the same song straight
Like everyone sings about home or going there or asking to be taken there or defining what it is to them but you still can't find where it is for you.


Like the gas tank is full but the battery is dead
Like the sharp curves of the asphalt just take you in circles and you can't find the exit to the roundabout
Like there are no curves and the road goes on forever and all you get are green lights blinding you but all you can ******* see is red

I can't shake these dreams that wake me with salt in my mouth and puddles on his chest
I wouldn't stray far enough into the dark to call them nightmares
I won't dare call them out by name
I'll go deep enough to whisper that they make embers glow again but I'll close my eyes before I scream at the moon or the corpses I'm lying next to
I'll wander hesitantly through the dates again but I won't admit that my mind might as well be buried with them
Am I in my head or in the coffin
Maybe the one I used to sleep on remains unmarked only because it's waiting for me to finally get some rest
Or maybe I just need to hold my peace I guess

Most nights I do not have to suffer the silence of showers in solitude
I am usually blessed with the sensation of the feeling of my fingers catching the puddles of water
drop by drop
that roll off of your torso,
like the hungry in a dumpster
like a lamb and a lion
like an 8 year old trying to grasp the difference between a metaphor and a smilie
like searching for the last dandelion of the season
eager and starving for it

I battle the drops spilling into my eyes to meet your grimace, teeth bared and eyes shut tight, as they win the war on your front, cascading down your lashes and curls and nose and jawline.
Even in this state, you look delicate and beautiful.
I've always said you were a work of art, a painting, a statue.
Like a sculpture on a frieze on the Parthenon. Or at least a roman marble copy.
Or at least you make me look at you that way.
I always slyly look up in hopes that you're returning the gaze when I'm not looking...
That's when I lose the war, with drops cascading down my lashes, and my curls, and my nose and collar bones.

Tonight your chest was bare and maybe you finally conquered the water
But tonight I'm showering with the lights off, under the distortion of the glow of pink lava ebbing and flowing from behind the curtains and I don't care if I'm alone or standing in an army of soldiers
I don't care if I win or lose
I'll let the stream rush over the contours of my face and mold it until it becomes a grimace or agonized or etched into wry
like it once did the very ground I walk upon and I'll let the steam fog the mirrors and leave dew drops on my shoulders until my bare chest turns scarlet and I crawl into the covers forced into silence

I'll try not to forget the first time I felt you looking at my white shoes and gold shirt and the way i tried to hide my rosy cheeks each time my eyes scanned the gym to find yours meeting my gaze from across the court. I'll try not to forget the way you got nervous when I showed interest and how you wanted to hold my hand but couldn't. I'll try not to forget how desperately you wanted to kiss me in attendance recovery but couldn't. I'll try not to forget how many times you watched 500 Days of Summer in my absence and all 500 similarities you contrived between that pretty girl with the heart shaped tattoo on the bike in the elevator on the rooftop and the one standing in front of you with a hidden scar down her chest flowers in her hair a crooked smile.
Ill try not to forget how many times you tried to be my friend because I told you that was what I wanted and how many times you couldn't bear that. I'll try not to forget the time you walked to my house in the dark just to read words in the dictionary on a mattress with me.

I'll try to forget the days when those words transformed into the absence of them.

I'll try not to forget the books we found at the flea market and the plant soil you spilled in my car and the talks we had late at night in your driveway and the fear of your mother finding out you were with a girl. I'll try not to forget the difference between sesame and teriyaki chicken because I always thought both looked disgusting but they made you happy so I appreciated them. Ill try not to forget the first night I slept in your bed and the innocently hesitant neck kisses. I'll try not to forget the night you desperately wanted to kiss me- and then desperately kissing you.
And how bad it was,
but how it made the sun shine brighter in that dark room than it ever has outside at noon.
I'll remember intimate conversations and the first time I told you I loved you and the way you didn't believe me and the months we spent not sure of what we wanted and how that uncertainty faded as the warm weather did and how the cold no longer comes from the winter but from the absence of your smile when I wake
I'll remember what you said about absence and this time I'll agree with you; absence makes the heart full and fond and full of longing, not hollow.

I'll remember the start in hopes of never having to try to forget an ending.

This morning I woke up smiling.
I kissed your cheeks.
Every tiny thing about you inspires me to write stanzas,
But who wants to read a poem entirely based on the way your face scrunches up in the shower, exposing your pearly whites while you grab loose strands of knots from the suds of conditioner
Or how in awe I am at the sight of the beautifully constructed transition of your chest to your neck and how I envision maroon little passions marks along it every time I stare at your throat vibrating when you speak, and your strong hands on my shoulders, hips, everything.
The way you smile seductively to get what you want and how I never thought you'd be that good at making my knees weak enough to buckle and bow down and give you every thing and every part of me I can muster up or hold in the palms of my tiny hands.
(I actually teared up today while looking at you but you don't know that because I was hogging the water and your eyes were closed.
For a moment I thought you must be the physical embodiment of the perfect human polykelitos wrote an entire novel and carved an entire bronze sculpture trying to create and bring to life.

-----

This morning I woke up and you were smiling. You kissed my cheeks. You told me you liked my cheeks. You gave me butterfly kisses and butterflies in my stomach and you left little maroon passion marks along my neck.

I don't think my body has ever felt more euphoric.
We fit together like Tetris.
Your body felt sacred.
Our passion was electric,
both of our souls pure and naked
just like the Greeks and then Romans painted.
Sometimes I feel like our love is geometric.

never the reality of it
not the way it moves or twitches or yawns or blinks or longs to hold hands or scratch backs
maybe the way it moans and arches, maybe
not the way it sings or paints or makes coffee or plays with it's niece or hugs its mother
the way it stays quiet and still when discontent, maybe
the way it makes money, maybe
the way every motion is to please you, maybe

cmon
tell me how you really feel
tell me you don't think of me like you used to
tell me you finally see how people get sick of me
tell me you're tired of resting your arm beneath my neck
tell me you're tired of being tired together
tell me again how happy someone else could make you
tell me you hate my ****** rhythm and shaky voice
tell me all of my paintings look like ****
tell me I don't mean **** to you
tell me my words mean nothing anymore
tell me my words mean nothing
please tell me I mean nothing