My boyfriend used to take me to Pizza ****
(as we always called it)
after every home basketball game.
We'd fill up on bread sticks,
box the leftover slices,
just so they could sit in the back seat
of his green Chevy jeep
while we made out in the parking lot
with Eric Church's new CD on the stereo.

I told everyone the bruises on my thighs
were just an accident,
when really he pushed me
into the tires
after he had a few or dozen beers
at the party down Bear Run.
He never did like being told
what he shouldn't do.

We'd lay down the seats
and sleep on sweatshirts
with a cooler lid for a pillow
until 10a.m. on a Sunday,
an hour late for mass.
Silently we'd ride
until we'd reach the power plant.
He'd cough and I'd sigh,
quietly singing until we'd reach my driveway.
He never did kiss me
whenever he'd drop me off.

I came back spring break
the following year.
The jeep in his yard with a for sale sign
propped against the hood
and his cell number
written in blue window chalk
just above the windshield wipers.
I saw his little sister
peek behind the curtain
when I knocked on the door,
but no one came to answer.
So I lit a cigarette and drove home
listening to "Springsteen."

And i needed to voice my thoughts
but if i did, you would worry
so my thoughts shall remain thoughts
and my voice will stay voiceless

I may or may not be in love with you.
it doesn't matter, really;
it won't last.
it feels like love, I think.
it feels like the first day of spring
when you can go outside
with no coat on and it's a little chilly
but the sun makes up for most of it.
it feels like the sea on hot summer days --
the kind you have in Greece,
not the Irish kind that's mostly just wet,
and it feels like a lot of other things
and it feels like love.
I may or may not love you,
but I do.

last night, I had a fever
and for a few hours of wonderful
hallucination I forgot about how
you left and all I could remember
was your accent and your
whiskey-and-cigarettes voice
and how you’d sound ****
reading the phone book.
I remembered your dark hair
in my face at night and
the smell of your perfume,
I remembered your gentle touch
and the way you smiled at me.
I remembered conversations about
a future we wouldn’t share and
breakfast and all of that mind-numbing
life-changing beauty of yours
and I woke up in tears because somehow
at some point I also remembered
that I’d spend all of my days without you.
(we did the right thing, I know we did, but
I will love you, I will love you.)

The hollow comfort is your ideal state.
When nothing’s lacking or wholly great.
You’re too unhappy to fall behind,
and too content to change.
The small pleasures are the world,
and the societal ‘leisures’ are no longer your mask.

The ecstasy is the excitement. The looming
joy, the ideal and the desired are all it takes to tip you.
It’s a rare and tainted feeling,
where your mind is in the warm clouds, and your feet
are reluctantly rooted to the cold concrete.
It’s easy for the dream to melt into ash and dust,

and once this goes amiss,
you plummet into the gaping abyss,
and the things you cared about before
are already nothing because you’ve tasted much more.
You can’t even see the precipice from amongst the rocks.
A shattered statute shadow. What were you like before?

You can chase it back and do it again.
You know you can climb.
You know it.