If I'm an emotional train wreck,
would you be a first responder?

If I die and lay in rest,
would you love me any longer?

I question myself constantly
wondering what I could become.
Should I be more than this,
or finally will I say that I'm done.

I want to quit
I want to stop

But I can't

I have a debt to pay
and a price that will not drop

So I'll keep at it
Until someone want me shot, dead
someone other than me.
I seem to be the only who can see beyond the ******* and lies that I tell
to myself
Every day

You can do it.
Just keep going.
You got this

So like I said,

I'm an emotional train wreck,
but are you my first responder?

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything.
It’s 6:57 in the morning and I’m munching pretzels.
I don’t care about the crumbs in the bed this time.
Normally I would, but this morning I don’t bother.
I think it’s because I know that I’ll clean them out when I wash my sheets next week.

I have to be at work in a few hours.
I moved back to a familiar town because the stress of trying to exist in a new place was too much.
Normally I love a challenge, but I should have listened to my father.
He said “It doesn’t matter what you do, you’re good at whatever you try to be good at.”

And that just about sums up the last 4 years.
Not being good at anything,
Because I don’t want to be good at it.
Finding niche hobbies that capture my imagination for a little smidge of time.
But all the while my patience is gaunt in the cheeks.

So that’s why I don’t mind the crumbs in the sheets.

My sunglasses twinkle
While they lay on your breast
I say “Go mingle”
You say “I’ll do my best”

We’ve been doing alright
We’re getting by
It’s been what, a week now?
Since either of us has cried

“Time to go” keys jingle
Crunching through the snow
It sounds like stale Pringles
“Why’d we have to go?”

“Why were we there at all?”
“I don’t know? Welfare call?”
“I just want to go to sleep”
“Our blankets run deep”

Keys jingle “Back. Finally.”
One slow upstairs trod

Above my door frame
A white board hangs on a rod

9 \ Days since last breakdown

“Scratch that”

Zero

Susan
with her china-white skin
relaxed
down to lace bra and *******—

“Have you ever heard this?” she asks

… sets the album, drops the needle
in the groove
We wait till bass fills in the room
sending time and silence empty-handed
down a hallway

Susan lights a joint
settles on the bed
ample legs begging apart
She ***** in deeply
impounding clouds  
Head thrown back
Thick glossy hair—
loses gravity
Eyes half-closed, shadow-heavy
clear and blue like piano
The walls are muted trumpet
stutter-hush of cymbal and the snare
Crackling over scratches

We are barely there

Susan exhales
a swirl of fog to a frail moon
Only her sultry voice still holds me tethered

“Have you ever heard anything— like this?”

Miles flows 
around me
Smoking
On the floor of Susan’s room
lying clothed and drunk
Soaked
with chords and wonder

I never hear him coming

Miles takes his time

Spaceman come back,
you'd only just made it here.

What's it like out there?
I wonder if there's no atmosphere.

Crazy, it seems to me,
that you have come so far

and all you've done

is leave