You were sitting at my counter, scribbling pages upon pages upon a little lined yellow notepad, passionate words about Christ and freedom and some bible verse from John, perhaps?
I didn't get to read much of it at all, and I'm not sure I really would have felt it as intensely as you did, but I did attempt to read you, from the corner of my eye while stirring cream into a cup of coffee. You were looking down at your words, his words, and had your headphones in, probably listening to either 90s r&b; or Bon Iver, (pronounced by you exactly how it's spelled), and you smiled as you slipped your fingers into the tiny bag of chocolate covered espresso beans I offered to share with you.

The shop was empty but the room felt full with laughter as we shared stories of our high school selves and embarrassing traits and things we thought we loved long ago.

You turned an exhausting evening into endearing emotions.
In case I don't see you before you leave for your "missionary opportunities,"
Thank you.
Good luck in Florida.

the books of poetry I’ve found on coffee tables and book shelves disappoint me
young adult white boys writing about kissing and oxygen like no ones ever had a drag of a cigarette or thought about a girl or looked at the stars before
they’ve reduced poetry to single thoughts that they pretend are important
And the twenty something year old girls who took a creative writing class congratulate them with a poem of their own
Broken into
Small stanzas
With few words
That mean
Nothing

...

The dramatics are too much.
There is more to human emotion than cliches and empty romantic lines that maybe you should just tweet out instead of, I don’t know, trying to publish a book.

But the funny thing is, oh the curious little thing is, they are published in books. Everywhere.
And where do my rants about childhood trauma or abandoned hospitals or ecstatic adventures get me?

writing poetry in private waiting for someone to ask me if I ever like to write, and I’ll say, I dabble, and never show them a word.

you may hear both sides of a story
but you believe the side of the one you love
and my dear, you've loved each chapter.
and as much as you might wish
you'd never read those words,
they still ring inside of you
but you skipped the epilogue,
which confessed that both sides are true;
it is possible that the hero is also the villain,
and the angel also the demon,
and the sweetest caramel skin masochistic,
and the ivory wristed sadistic.
And the fire that had engulfed them both at one time
was the reader, with much to learn.
Because with pleasure came so much pain,
caused by each of us to the other,
and for that I almost wish I never touched her,
but I am more than thankful that a part of her touched me,
for I too once was just a reader, with much to learn.
And I read of a flower who cracked the strongest concrete,
I was afraid that I might have killed it,
so I left the bud there, to blossom under another's water and sunlight,
for I have much to learn on the art of forgiveness of others and oneself and the art of suffering in silence.
Let her teach you something. Let her whisper oxygenated truths into your ear and believe that it is all true, because it is, to her and to me and to you.

the red slashes on your hips intersected at angles to form letters
of words that you thought were worthy of being sliced into your skin
but you're nothing close to disgusting
you're beautiful and captivating and kind
and I know you're afraid that I will love you less
when I see you at your worst but I promise
that I will wait for you when you take hours to feel pretty, even though I think you already are
and I will still kiss you when you have the smell of onions on your breath
and I will still love you with blood rushing down your legs because you hate yourself and you can't do anything right
and I will still think you're perfect when the scale reads higher than it did last Wednesday
and I will still comfort you when you scream at night because of the hauntings that come with closed eye lids and fading consciousness
and I will still hold you when you're crying so hard that you can't speak.
I hope that I am never the cause for why you consider these things
to be flaws (and I know that I cannot stitch you up or save you with love) but I hope that I can help the insecurities fade, like the scars on your hips.

Eleven months later, I use a pink highlighter to transform the scarred "ew" on your thigh into "beautiful" and God I still wish I could transform it in your mind as well.

Some nights I can’t cope with the fact that one day
I
And everyone I love
Will someday
Die

There is no way to put it nicely, the sobbing that comes from the already mourning of the soon to be skeletons walking and hugging and loving

I can’t sleep at night knowing one day I won’t wake up
I can’t breathe when I think about it and sometimes that makes me think I’ll be taking my last one gasping for air
Which makes the air even harder to catch

I can’t believe there were days where I wanted nothing more than to just not wake up
And today that fear is what keeps me up

I forgot to tell my mother goodnight before I retreated back to my bedroom and I don’t think I checked to make sure the back door was locked

Who created an existence so fragile
So miserable
Who gives us the pleasure of feeling such intense emotions and love for others and is okay with ripping that all away in an instant for some and allowing the grief for everyone else to linger until another loss distracts them

I don’t ever want to pick out funeral flowers for my father.

the worst feeling is the one when writing is the only release you've got but you've got writers block and you can't conjure the words that explain the emptiness behind your thoughts
the word indescribable cancels itself out and you're left wondering if writing on cave walls sharpens or disintegrates the rock.
I wish I could find the words to tell you that I can't sleep at night, not even under your sheets and Christmas lights, and I'm not sure why. I wish I could find the words to tell you that I never have energy or motivation or an appetite.
I wish I could find the words to tell you that I miss your passion and affection and the inspiration you used to spark inside of me. And even more so the words to tell you that I think you misplaced those things, like your wallet and dollar bills and lighters.
I'm searching under couch cushions for cheek kisses and creative lyrics about the sparks I lit inside of you.
Maybe you didn't lose them though. Maybe I lost the fire.
Maybe I'm the small fireworks at ten pm and you're midnight on New Years Eve.
Maybe you need a bigger flame.
I want you to have that.
I want to be that, but the only words I can think of to tell you are that I've found damp coals in my soul and I don't know how to replace them with new ones.
I wish I had words.
These words are hollow.
Which makes sense because that's all I've felt lately.
I hope you continue to love me when I'm nothing but hollow eyes and dark circles and collar bones.
I hope I can continue to love you in the right way with this skeleton but I feel weaker knees failing me already.
Show me how to float like you do.
Show me how to fly and light on fire.
Let me be midnight with you.
I need to be midnight or I won't make it until then.

That last sentence has so much meaning behind it and I wish I could find the words to explain the symbolism or intensity of it.
I wish I could find words so I could stop with the repetition but I'm just repeating myself.

I am trying not to
let your silence get
to me because I
know that you mostly
speak with your limbs
and they say love
but maybe your heart
speaks a language I
understand well while your
head communicates in foreign
tongues I cannot translate

I will get what I want this time
because I can be selfish too.
What I lack in charm and eloquence
I make up for in bravery.

My hands were shaking when I saw you
the blood, dried up and masking your face,
your lips looked soft against the harsh black scabs
and your eyes looked full beneath the stitches on your brow
with bands on your wrists and
the little white clip on your finger measuring your pulse,
you looked so fragile, so small
I wanted to pick you up
stick you on a little orange wand and blow you into a bubble
so that you could float around unharmed and small
and I could make sure nothing popped you, and if it did,
I could catch you. and put you in another one.
Anything to keep you safe.

my hands were shaking when your mother told me you were in the hospital
my hands were shaking on the way to visit you in the icu
I couldn't shake the vision of a boy laying in a casket
I wondered what shirt they'd put you in
I know you're okay now and that is getting me by
but the anxiety of it all comes back each time I close my eyes
it comes pouring out of me like the blood from your head
and I can't find the medicine to clot them

I wish I could wipe the blood without reopening wounds
But your face still looks nice with gashes across it
you even look a little brave
like you fought wolves all afternoon
i'm just glad you won

I want to show you that I'm ******* ok without you
I want to ******* and not feel anything
I want you to feel me and feel everything

How ironic that it is the opposite

If only besos could fuel this old Pontiac
Then again,
Even then I'd probably still run out of gas

I’ll spend my whole life trying to make it up to you, and I’ll never be able to, I’ll never deserve you. But maybe I can make you forget all of the bad **** that I’ve done to hurt you. I wish my love wasn’t so toxic. I wish it was still the love that could make flowers grow. I’ll spend my whole life strengthening my green thumb.

FRIDAY NIGHTS WERE FOR
walmart runs and getting drunk and baking red velvet cake and another walmart run because we forgot to get chocolate icing the first time and flour on our eyelashes like snowflakes in Colorado and cranberry juice and ***** and twirling around the kitchen and heavy hearted kissing on the sofa and medicine for the people and forbidden touching and a few tears and endless loving.

SATURDAY NIGHTS WERE FOR
numbly staring at the tile above the faucet and soaking for hours in the tub with a book sitting on the ground and not being able to gather my thoughts and focus enough to pick it up and start reading it and laying in my mothers bed and watching sad films about writers and hitchhikers and thinking if this were 1947, that would be us;

but this isn't 1947,
this is sunday,

and SUNDAYS ARE FOR
sleeping until my body cannot take any more rest and willing myself to get dressed and singing on the 10th floor of parking garages over looking the city and looking for green lights at the end of all the tunnels because you're okay and I'm doing my best.

It is odd for one to wish
to have skin made of crystals in order to captivate your interest,
an aroma that fills the air and lingers, so that an opened door tilts the head back,
a hazy effect on the mind and thought processes that leaves the thinker in awe of his own self,
to know one's worth, how much per gram of soul
and to appreciate their craving and need for you to be in the palm of their hand, or rolled up and inhaled euphorically.
It is odd for a flower to wish she were a ****, however, some gardens aren't meant to be watered, rather, they are destined to become forest fires.

When my father looked down at me,
half-jokingly asked if he'd be
checking me into rehab
within the next few years,
a part of me I didn't know I harbored
hit the back of my throat,
wanted me to
bark back remarks that
I hadn't known would ever grow
from years of watching him destroy his body
from tears from watching him,
his eyes half-closed, his head half-nodding,
half-listening to the stories of a little girl
who wanted not to be forgotten
who wanted one less memory of a door
ripped half way off the hinges
who wanted one more memory of
the stillness of a mug on our glass table
not earthquakes in louisiana and
heartbreak from ceramic shards laying in
coffee and powdered xanax
How I wished the word rehab
wouldn't have made you more mad
would have crossed your mind
would have been a solution to
the problem you never thought we would find
out about you kept your secret hidden
at the expense of her image
We burned her name to keep you lifted
you never apologized you never got help
you did it all by yourself
after years of watching you destroy your body,
how dare you look at me and question
if my glass of wine is too full
if my bottles are piling up
I think my organs are fine, thank you,
it runs in our family not to want help.


Of course, that side of me stayed silent,
and will never be exposed,
at least not face to face,
only in anonymously written prose.

So I laughed and not knowing what to say
masking the feelings I wouldn't show,
I looked at him in his tired run down eyes
and I half-jokingly replied with "No."

"Hand-holding-*****."
is it still considered an alliteration if the words sound the same but actually start with different letters?
is it still an abomination if the others didn't mean a ******* thing?

if rubbing my thumbs across his only proved that I was capable of maintaining a relationship with someone for five years
- a sort of reward of comfort.

if the second time was because I was in liberty with
a stranger when it came to emotions and thoughts
but not when it came to exploring and touch
and only because I felt like it fit the mood
and only because I was missing your fingers and his felt close enough

if the third was purely because it was cold and lonely in the cemetery
and for once I craved romance rather than cringed from it
(even though gravitating towards graveyards is a cynical form of it)
but then I shied away from his lips
and we haven't really spoken much since.

does that count?
Maybe so, but I've never been a wishful thinker.
I think your fingers are the only ones that ever
truly touched me.
That I could ever really feel.
That ever made me feel.
I think I want your hands in mine,
but I also really like the feeling of
passing joints between foreign palms

I like heading to liberty
I like half-decade-long friendships
I like headstone letters

I like having a hand to hold.
Who can blame me for filling empty holes
when yours are no longer home?

I just want your smile.
Why must you give it to Her?

People often make themselves feel better in times of despair by quoting that there must be darkness to see the light.
I suppose I see things a little differently, without darkness, I have nothing.
And by that I mean that by ridding my life of negative influences and hostility, I have realized that I have nothing left.
I am an empty carcass, cracked down the spine with no light inside to leak out into the black room.
I am looking to replace the bulbs in my organs if I can find the right ones, but I don't know the difference between halogen and fluorescent and the sparks in my brain are starting to dull as well, there are also cracks in my skull, but that's not the only way I can tell..

So,
CLASSIFIED ADS:
- looking for a bulb that might fit, please call if you're interested
please call..

Tonight I will kneel down and pray
for four leaf clovers to plant
myself in a windy city,
and fear that in the sea of tiny greens,
my little fingers will fumble upon one,
and wash me away from the level below it.

You see, I want more than anything to leave,
but I'm used to the low altitude,
got water in my lungs and I'm just so scared
that up there, there's just too much air.

The thing about inseparability is that you spend so many sleepless nights trying to familiarize yourself with each and every reason he named the arrangement of those walls "home" and when you finally leave (the candy bowl, the green Christmas lights, the keyboard, the twin size mattress, the bathroom cabinet),
Kenopsia lies in the forgotten combination code and you're left blankly staring at your front door and the splinter in your foot from the plywood floor and the unexpectedly obnoxious ding of the microwave and the look on your moms face when you have to ask which forks are in which drawer and when your cat paws at your tangled headphones but runs when you try to pet her and you remember that she is actually a he and you had to change his name because Matilda wasn't unisex enough for your niece, who's been making all A's in school, no thanks to you, even after the help you promised her was never provided, much like the bowling nights and painting mornings you once planned with her.
And you can't sleep at night because your arms aren't flexible enough to wrap themselves around your torso and rest beneath your neck like his did and your bed makes an unfamiliar screech each time you toss or turn or stretch, or blink, or take a breath and the light can't be turned off with a click of a button and the room is too cold without a radiating body next to you to fill the frigid air with warm words about running toward city lights, and you realize that you've dreamed of a home your entire life and you thought you'd never found it and maybe you still haven't but you've built a structure with his bones and use his curls as blankets,
but what the three little pigs didn't warn you of was that all it takes is a cloudy day to birth a storm strong enough to rip the ribs off their hinges.
The storm hasn't hit home yet, but it's almost hurricane season, and you can't remember where your dad always hid the flashlights from your niece; and light is shed on the fact that darkness houses vulnerability.

You're starving - not because our relationship is barely surviving-
but because you've been eating someone else's affection and now it's all gone,
and you blame it on being unlovable.
Maybe you should blame it on the fact that you already have honey, you've just lost the appetite for what's yours.

She sang loudly through wide smiles, fumbling to find the right words and throwing her head back in laughter when she mixed up the chorus every time.
Her voice soundly lovely and the sun illuminated her eyes and the dream catchers swung in her mirror and her hand felt solid in mine
And the road went on as we drove on
and for just a moment, I think she forgot about her fathers death.
And that moment was hope.

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

It all started with a dream dictionary, and then a mixtape, and then attendance recovery because neither of us ever went to school.
And then we thought it ended with a graduation cap.
we tried so many times but it never worked out for some reason. I thought the universe must have been conspiring against me…
But somehow perhaps the universe ended up on my side, and she gave me you.
You've given me a long life in the short period of time we've been together and it's been one hell of an adventure.
I'm not sure how it really will end.
Or if the universe really is on my side. If not, at least she'll be against US this time. Because I don't belong in a world where I don't end up with you, and I'm so glad we live in the one where we do.
It's been a dream.

While you were reading "the Word" in that hotel room in new mexico or California or wherever the ******* slept with her that night, you should have been looking up passages on forgiveness or some other godly, holier-than-though horseshit that's supposed to make you into a better person.

I don't need a bible to tell me that what you did was wrong and I definitely don't need one to tell me that I should forgive you.
Because despite the horrific time we spent together, I know it wasn't all your fault. I've learned to forgive not only you, but also myself.

I don't need an angel to pull me out of depression. I don't need an angel to tell stories to of every glorifying good deed I've done in my life to get me into the gates of Heaven. I don't need Satan telling me I'm too good for Hell because let's face it: none of us really are.

I hope you know that when people ask about you, I tell them how lovely you are, that you're genuinely a good person who's dealt with more struggles than she deserves, who I treated poorly when she deserved her feet washed and her presence bowed to.

So when you tell those same people that I'm a pathological liar,
perhaps maybe you're right.

But I'm not lying when I say, I hope for happiness in your head.
I hope one day you don't feel the burning need to fill others' with pity for you and hatred for anyone you feel is against you,
that burning desire you have to destroy yourself so you throw everyone else into the furnace? Yeah. You know the story.

I hope you know I loved you, I loved you, I loved you.
I hope you know I never wish I hadn't.
I hope you believe yourself when you say that I'm a liar so that none of this makes you feel an ounce better about yourself.

In Jesus name I pray,
Amen.

"I'm back, I'm good, I'm right here."
"Wait no, dear god, dear Jesus, lord, I'm sorry."

You were very high.
You were floating in and out of reality and your head was not in the clouds but it was buried underground and you prayed to your god telling him you were not ready to die and you apologized for loving me and you didn't want to go to Hell and you sang your favorite song to lower you back down
but everytime your toes slightly tapped the earth your heart beat faster and your wings began to flutter and you cried and shook and you wanted to erase your whole life and I have never seen you so afraid,
But you were not ready to die.
You're not ready to die.
You will live because you want to.
And I will live because I want you.

It's not poetry unless it's spilling out of your mouth.
The only words I wanna read are the ones your hands wrote.
The only mind I want to be taught by is the one inside of you.

I thought her hands were holy
And then I kissed an angel.

You said that you weren't as weak as I am.
weak weak weak weak weak weak weak weak weak
IF WEAK IS FORGIVING PEOPLE FOR BREAKING MY HEART AND HAVING THE COMPOSURE TO NOT DISREGARD OTHERS AS HUMAN BEINGS FOR ******* UP OR ******* MY BOYFRIEND THEN YOU ARE LUCKY THAT I AM WEAK. IF WEAK IS LOVING MY FATHER DESPITE THE ADDICTION AND MY MOTHER DESPITE THE PROMISCUITY AND BOTH DESPITE THEIR BROKEN PROMISES THEN I WANT TO BE WEAK.
WHY WOULD I EVER WANT TO BE STRONG?
Weak is peaceful and weak is kind and if strength is measured by the ability to cut people out of your life with no remorse then I feel terribly sorry for the strong people in the world.
Strength is sad and lonely and begrudging
and tight muscles and hard exteriors and quick breaths.
Weakness can be the long drawn out exhale that comes before death
as long as I've got someone holding my hand in the hospital bed...

if I seem desperate, it's because i am.
i don't care about dignity.
i care about you.

how many nights in a row can I drink white russian daiquiris
and smack ink onto a blank sheet before I realize
that I haven't pressed the "J" key even once
in hopes that my brain won't jumble the letters
and create word searches with only your name in the word bank.
i'm not dyslexic but I do love puzzles.
crosswords, jigsaws, multi-colored cubes,
cryptograms, mazes, tetris, Sudoku...
the only one I can't seem to solve is you.

****.
Once again, I'm stuck.

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.

I have a habit of overthinking
hard as I try I cannot stop the growth of a thought
once the seed has been planted

(I remember driving to the city once
we wanted to take my niece and his nephew to the aquarium
the kids asked about the blanket of vines and leaves that formed wall-like structures on both sides of the interstate
we told them about how it was an invasive species from Asia, and that it spread all across the south and engulfed whatever plants and trees that originally stood there
the whole hour ride they sat in the backseat,
shouting "kudzu!" every time they spotted it out the window)

kudzu
kudzu
kudzu
kudzu
kudzu
kudzu

a lackadaisical lifestyle is not ideal for a daisy
who desires to sing lullabies to dreaming lovers
who longs to grow taller and smaller with a sip of sincerity
instead of saccharine goodbyes
if only time travel were not impossible
to see if this rabbit-hole i am stuck in leads to a lavish garden in the end
then i could decide if waking up were the right direction
or if patience would be rewarded in this Lacklusterland

I'll drink wine in a different floral mug each night of the week to trick my kidneys into believing it is romantic rather than cataclysmic and I'll walk the graveyards like I don't have the dates and names memorized already and I'll call the moon a 'she' and watch her disappear and I'll never stop trying to impersonate the squeaks of your swings when my voice feels unsteady.

Ninety-seven pounds and a stitched mouth…



I feel so heavy. I tried not to eat today.

Two waffles (without syrup) for breakfast,

a raspberry white chocolate scone for lunch.

A bowl of potato salad to hide the suspicion.

An M&M; cookie to munch on.



However, I don’t believe that this is the kind of heaviness

that cutting my calories can fix,

for it is my thoughts that are weighing me down.



A few glasses of wine might make me feel a little lighter.

And, on the contrary, perhaps shattering

a few light bulbs might make things a bit brighter.

God, it must be a magic trick, how you can make lights from pollution seem like the city beyond golden gates, the windows down, scarlet curls of frizz illuminated.
I was jealous of the shotgun, and you asked me if I had a good view, and the only answer I could think of was that I didn't, at least, not of you.
Four seasons later and I'm back in the backseat of your car, it's summer again, only this time everything is different.
You still somehow manage to summon the small hidden youth I've got left in this old soul, even though the roads are blocked and sirens are on patrol.

This morning I watched a tiny baby bird take its last little breath, his chest puff out and then settle, his feathers lay flat and his head tilted back and his feet curled up underneath himself
a fatal game of cat and mouse, and the mouse chirped from under the kitchen table and with every yell the clench of the felines jaw tightened and if I could bring anyone back from the dead, it would be that little bird.
so soft and vulnerable, sleeping black and white in my pale palms.
I know its in his nature to hunt, but its in my nature to love, and this bird was so worthy, worthy of flying and seeing the sky and finding worms and maybe in the mornings he would have sang me awake and come to perch on my bird feeder, but war is an age old tale that continues on and nature has a way of being cruel
I can't stop picturing his little body, his tiny heart that probably loved as much as a baby bird could
I can't stop creating metaphors out of this scenario
where sometimes i'm the baby bird, and sometimes, i'm the cat.
and I hope that my foolish games and tendency to play never takes away the opportunity for happiness from anyone
I never want to be the cat, but I also never want to be the baby bird.
But I'll never want to be happy off the backs of another, and that's enough to make me choose the bird if the tables were turned.

I want you to put me on your tongue and let me dissolve into you like the tiny white squares that turn those glossy hazel marbles into black holes and intense stares. I want you to kiss me and see negative colored rulers in the corner of your vision and I want you to have trouble making a decision between kissing me and observing me while I'm sitting on your chest and I want you to laugh like you did with your cherry colored lip curled over your childish grin over and over and over again and I want you to forget the conversation topic every time you close your eyes because the world inside of your mind is filled with blinking images that you can't quite explain aloud so you settle for little talks about Rosa Parks and Indian style kisses and how the ocean is the Earth's thing or the complexity of butterfly brains and whether or not they remember their caterpillar memories (they do). Describe to me the first time you saw your favorite color and what developed the affinity for it: yours, a glacier blue toy that resembled the ocean and mine, a lavender Easter dress that twirled when I spun. Tell me about your school crushes when you were four and what you got your clothespin moved to the sad face for and I'll write it all in ink on my knee caps because "God, we're such writers" and you'll check the clock in the gaps and search for tunes or lighters and I'll want time to slow down because the nights spent with you usually seem as though minutes are just a few seconds shy of sixty, which turns the little hand pretty quickly.
I want hours, weeks, decades, to analyze the freckles on your face or the pace at which you move your tongue and precisely how it tastes.
I want you to tell me that your brother would like me and about the mountains in Tennessee and maybe next time I'll try to stay awake, unless you want to listen to the way I breathe so fully when I dream.

When I close my eyes, I want to be able to see what you see.
I want you to keep burying the numb parts of you into the warm parts of me.

That night, the moon and stars were barely visible through the clouds. That night, you said you were glad that neither of us were in our own beds. The words came out slowly in broken fragments and your voice was raspy in hypnagogia, yet somehow it still sounded like a euphoric dream. That night, every inch of our bodies were touching and even when it was almost physically impossible, I somehow still had the intense yearning for you to be closer. Now it's 1:13 AM, and tonight, I am in my own bed, feeling empty and craving your arms around me. And you're in your bed with cloudy thoughts and constellations made of cravings I'm unsure of...
*Is it selfish of me to hope that we are seeing the same moon?

Cemetaries with graves more comforting than my own bed and bottles of wine in Parkinson's palms
Industrial factory lights at night that bewilder and leave wandering wants and wondering won'ts and wanderlust
Abandoned rodeos with the perfect pair of longitude and latitudinal lines for a sunset view and dance floors of dirt and footprints in spirals and you
And bowling alley parking lots and songs from my adolescence and secrets spilling from our mouths
And the fairground park swingset and sparklers and nostalgia looming just above the grassy horizon
The 10th floor of the casino parking garage and the water looks curious and inviting,
and it's a long way down.

And I'm a long way from home,
Until I'm in your arms.