For the low low price of just being within' earshot,
the conversation analyst will run a full diagnostic on your conversation.

You know how that perfect comeback
feels, three weeks after
You didn't say it?

In training, representatives for Inbound sales listen to recordings of their own phone calls and critique them like Art majors in a studio class.

Our conversation analyst.
Looks at you like a shoe on the wall.

Unlike the psychology major,  the conversation analyst will never share his results.

He'll just judge you.
Silently.

He doesn't speak.
His fourth grade english teacher taught him that the carpenters house is never finished.
She was referring to her husband, the carpenter, not finishing the renovations on their new home, but the conversation analyst heard it as a metaphor, and adopted it as a universal truth.

Much like a painting controls the path your eye travels the canvas, or the scientific process that goes into composing music,
the way you build rapport is one of those things that people don't realize can be an art form until they wittness it professionally.

Our conversation analyst considers himself  Socio-passionate.

Which amuses him, when he deducts points from your conversation for not empathizing correctly.
Or not giving effective compliments by asking a relevant question afterwards.

The conversation analyst is not always mute. On special occasions such as first impressions he is a fine conversationalist.

You can meet the conversation analyst for the first time, as many times as you want.

If the carpenters house is never finished.
The conversation analyst
exemplar at listening,
Will never hear you.

Today, we have surgery
I sink my chest into yours.
Your blood pumping through my veins for a bit,
I feel heavy.

I want to turn to a whisp.
Like the Night Elves in World of Warcraft.
A floating blue orb of energy
weightless electricity,
Spirit in the power lines, like that spark we felt.
Tealight in a gas stove, left on for 6 months

When I am cremated
My ashes will be Kept in little ziplock baggies,
Filed away in the back seat of my mothers car,
Until she parks in a bad part of town
You break in
Leave the quarters for the tolls
Leave the GPS cupped to the windshield.
Then snort me, in my mothers backseat.
Thinking you just hit the jack ***.
That's where I will be.
Charcoal cave painting your nasal cavity
coating the inside of your lungs like a cigarette.
Replacing your addiction.

This surgery
The Aorta of copper perfume,
Scalpels summoning blood,
I, scavenged from the wreckage

my heart inside you,
the rest scrapped in a kiln.

If they botch the surgery
cold Iron will be the last thing you smell.

I, a spark
grounding from your chest.

Heart still beating.

I fumble for my next dose
Blue chalky circles spill
Onto white linoleum
Clicking for every lost meal
Bounce like My shaky hands
No interest in obeying
Nobody ever stopped asking for an answer.

My first vice
Dependant on malnutrition
addiction, in fear
fists coming down, off the high.
there is no such thing as a familiar crash
Always a new drug.
hands struggle without muscle
We shake together.
Indulged in recall
Dissolved in water.

I sometimes feel bad for my first upper
Too quick to cheat
Carbonated me fat
Made my teeth fall out
Drew me into television
Tom and Jerry became my bedtime
I gorged myself on escapism.
After a seisure I would regret that much of this new drug.
I ration just enough
She forces my shaky hand
Insist I never talk to her while the show is on
the show is everything.
a vacuum, dusty room, spotless television
There is never a crash.
Only crippling mania

I won't **** this new addiction..
Her absence is a gateway to new powders
this Killing drug gave me the power to stop craving more.
There is closure in calling a poison by it's first name.
We call ourselves poison from the very beginning.

the little blue pills are my escapists cure.
I always go back to coffee
kept warm, by an indulgence I can hold around family.
I've a curious tongue, an educated pallete.
Seven years slinging uppers, black.

Before I learned how to read a clock
All I wanted was for it to snow
In maine, I'm skeptical when not frozen.
If I made a snow angel, I would never come down.

Snow makes beautiful quicksand.
It's hard to inhale when drowning.
I am also more likely to expand my pallete on oxygen alternatives when drowning.

The ocean has infectious curiousity
Sirens dwell there for a reason.

if I had a boat.
I wouldn't make it past the poppys

Thankfully, I do not have a boat.
Only weak Coffee

You have a million ways to leave me.
took all of them
your cellphone beside me
lovers away from me
in the distance you can't be touched
blaming of your mental illness
admitting you don't love me, silently.

were late on our anniversary, from ******* his ****,
it's not that I mind, it just measures your respect of me.
I'm not surprised when you can't touch me after
or look in my eyes

everything you do, is fine.
you only do what you want.
I am so lucky, for any time at all
for three days in a hotel room
for three days I wait, for you to look at me.
screaming at a window.

we wont admit the window is only when we look at each other.
when our backs turn, it's roses
isn't it funny.
a million miles between us, content with our illusions
two key cards, the truth too loud to sleep.
buzzing static in the space between our chests.
I want so badly to touch it
flies part when I swat.

You used to moan when I kissed your ear
your muscles tense
I stop kissing your ear
you used to blush when I would stare at your body
you change in the dark.
I stop staring, where you can see me.

I witness your new lovers
you tell me they force your head down, how you liked it.
if I tried that, the amount of guilty in me would tear me out of my body.
you would stay silent and guilty, I won't touch you
I am the one man who wont touch you
I am the one man you won't let touch you.
his pregnant wife moved out of his house
you would raise his baby, you say.
I cry through desperation
You ask if I regret my decision
through tears, deep silence
I say I am proud of you.

I am proud of you.
I know the love
the hope you feel.
it's not my place to stop it
only show you how it burned
Do I regret it?
it was the most wonderful love I could imagine
I'm not saying it will hurt "except the good parts"
I am saying it will hurt
Especially the good parts.
there is much to gain, in losing your childhood.
Please, don't stay a child.

it isn't fair to compare you to her.
you chose her favorite color
your new lover calls you the name of my unborn daughter
I can't stop it, but I cry sometimes.
you sound like her
the body language in your "****"'s.
did you know she hated drinking? until she could not stop.
I convinced her to take the first sip,
when you drink ***** I cringe.
she left her daughter for heroine.
when you tell me you want to feel numb, I worry for the baby you are leaving behind
as you foregeo your childhood

his pregnant wife left him because of you,
he hates children
you are 19.
he is 38.
yet he says he loves you, with his snake tongue
I have seen your body
I know it's siren call.

You are not a monster,
or safe in this skin you hate.
around me.

We are still in love.
you haven't left me.
I've been twisted by this vacancy sign in your lawn
I'm going to die on this memory of you raising the family I wanted.
You are some new version of yourself, in the same beautiful skin.
your limp old body draped over a children's empty bed frame
I am such a monster, I would **** it.
Just to be inside of something familiar.

while I sleep next to you in this hotel room.
you are wearing jeans.
my engagement ring.
and his cologne.

dandelion seeds look too peaceful.
delicate moth stems with fluffy hands, floating like whisps of cloud in the wind.
For something so poisonous, they sure look free.

I, like Pavlovs dog, hold my breath to pass howling lawn mowers.
fresh cut grass is out to get me.
I pray that man take the saw off the lawn
may grass grow bountiful but never watered
build a dome to block the rain.
out of lead, to blockthe sun.
I'll peak inside every morning to watch them brown and wilt.
we can't ruin the eco-system fast enough.
****** tissues and blood shot eyes

When you were sniffling today
It was not from the grass.
the blood in your tissues.
was from me.
I am your allergy.

I pray nobody waters me.

the gate locks behind us as we scuttleunder snowfall
bundled in peacoats and scarves
Coffee in our hands, so that they may not hold each other.
Gloves that hold no warmth, so we couldn't touch, in case we did.
We want to hold hands, but we're too happy with our coffee.
playing chicken, who's gonna be mentally stable first
driving cars at each other seeing who will turn.
but the roads long.
we pass open fields of ex-lovers
mountainsides of therapists
what started as a race, seems ike a leisurely scenic route now.
our white knuckles loosening,
Our manic tunnel vision, fading as we become narcoleptic
nodding off slightly as the cars pull closer.
Whenever we take our gloves off,
We'll be lucky not to have driven off road
collide with another field or mountain.
because we couldn't put down our coffee.
afraid of falling asleep
what if our eyes are closed, and we can't decide to be brave.
What if one day we made up in a hospital, in the same bed
two broken windshields.
Crashing, only when we fall asleep.
can we truly call it a conscious decision?

I've invented 3 new colors since I last left this room.I've invented 3 new colors since I last left this room.
I've grown too familiar with the first 9
It gave me someome to talk with.
They never told me their names
But Lorde told me what they smell and sound like.
She has synesthesia.

One is a sweating cavern, howling sirens, calling on foggy hot rocks, smelling of sulfer but luring you with their chill.

One is a cracked crown, dropped from the luggage of a fallen king. Gem stones scattered on the dirt road, to the clomping hoof of his horse trotting away towards buildings that stand tall like pill bottles.

One is a flower blooming with a child in the pollen, crying. The childs crying grows quieter as it seems to lower it's opacity and fade out of existence.

These are colors,
just colors...