Have you ever told a lie
so convincing that you ended up
believing it yourself?
Almost as if your reality became the lie that you told
and anything that was the truth was forgotten.

Like a dream you once had but began to forget after you woke up?
But once something triggers you to remember the smallest detail
of that dream, like the way your collarbones did,
or the way that everything is always
closer than it appears to be,
the truth all comes fading back
in vague waves.

A déjà vu that you've tried to forget
but every time that you do …
you feel like you've already forgotten it before.

I’m about to tell you a lie...
And all that I ask is that you believe it like I did.
It will make the waves a lot
easier to drown in once you remember the truth.
And maybe once you remember the truth you’ll
remember that you've already drowned here before.

This year is fading out into a new one
but nothing’s really changed.
The sun rises and sets
but every day is the same as the last two combined.

It makes me wonder what God would say to me
if he had the nerve to speak to me like he did Adam.
Would he apologize for the time when he had
the rain wash off all the kisses you ever placed on me,
or would he try justifying himself for the times
he made a fifteen-hundred foot drop seem like
the curbs we used to play on and construct dams in to watch
the hose water build up,...
like we could, maybe, just maybe,
form our own oceans and sail away from our childhoods.
Yet for some reason no matter how hard we tried
there were always leaks and holes we could never quite fill.

I learned this year that names
are just apologies you attach to people
so you can remember the hurt they caused
you every time you hear one,
and voices are nothing more than the same voice mail
you've heard a thousand times
when you call but they never picked up
Yet at the same time…
they always seem to answer your question of
If they’re there to comfort you in your time of need.
Because they promised you that they
would stay but they never really made it clear
if what they meant to say was that they would stay away.

Next year make sure you never believe
someone when they tell you who they are
or what their intentions are.
Those will be the first lies they tell you.
The next lie they will tell you
is that they know how you feel,
and the lie after that will always be
that they are different from everyone else.
The last lie they will tell you…
is that they will stay.
But you've already heard these lies before.

I’m not sure who I learned this from,
but make sure the next time someone
tries to convince you to care for them
you turn around and drive away
because they won’t care for you in return.
Don't you dare look back in that rear view mirror on your exit route either,
because no matter how hard you try to distance yourself
Objects in the past will always be closer than they appear.
Actually,
it was you who taught me that
and it wasn't until I was
1,488 feet down the road that I realized
how I’d already been here before.

I knew all the names of the roads around your
house like the streets were trying to apologize
for a sin that I swear had been committed before.
And like Lot's wife, I sometimes felt the need to look back
but I knew **** well that if I ever did
I would become a petrified
pillar of
“I’m sorry”
and
“I never meant for it to end this way.”
And I only know this
because I've already looked back before.

Remember how we promised each other we would
never become the people who we are now?
Yet here we sit,
Cigarette ashes and empty bottles.
Burning our pipe dreams away and drinking to our sorrows.

It makes me wonder how it all went so wrong,
yet at the same time I was right there.
I watched Rome burn to the ground
and all I did was thank you and Nero for the violin music
you provided as I drowned in the ashes
of what we could have been and never were.
Make sure you remember that Rome wasn't built in a day,
but also remember all it took was one night to burn it down.

This year taught me to never
let anyone borrow one of your books
because after they've read all of your good parts
they'll skip to the ending and leave your plot with leaks and holes
that you'll attempt to patch up as you drown once more.
And most of the time they won’t give you your book back.
You'll stay up at night in a cold sweat wondering what markings you
abandoned in its pages that you'll never be able to read again.
and they just aren't worth losing a part of yourself too.

You know the thing that really bugs me is that
you can only follow your dreams after you've
woken up from them,
but every time that I wake up I’m stuck forgetting
every detail and inch of your flawless skin.
The way that your collarbones cut through my soul
and left me begging for you to pull every last one
of my ribs apart
make sure that when you do you don't stop until
you hear them snap and break apart leaving holes that
I can vainly try to fill before I drown in my own
blood that I swear has been split before.
Tear me apart so you can see my defective heart
beating for you
and secretly I wonder
if maybe tearing apart my ribcage
would release all the demons
trapped inside this empty heart of mine.

and thinking of the plans we had to move
away into some big city
and to never look never look back at this town,
excite me still because I know it will still happen
but it won’t be you who I’m running away with this time.
Our pasts will always stay closer than
they appear to be.

And do you remember how we were going to cover our
apartment walls in broken records
and coffee stains?
I seem to always forget how you were
never really worth it from the start
and how I was only confused to wake up
from this dream because
I never actually fell asleep.

And as I look back on this year...
I guess nothing's really changed.
The year fades out like the truth
after we've believed our own lies,
and the new year introduces itself with
all the same lies they told you.

And what ever year this is know that its number
is just an apology set for a later date
and that no matter how this year
promises it will be different than the last,
don’t believe it because,
it won’t.
And don’t trust it when it says it’s here to stay,
because you've already heard that lie before.

This year be careful about who you say you won’t become
because chances are you’re already them.
and no matter how fast you try to drive away from your past
just remember that objects in the rear view mirror
are closer than they appear
and that no matter how hard you try to build a dam
so we can sail away from our adulthood
there will always be leaks and holes
we will never quite be able to fill.

I hope you believed this lie like I did
because it’s the truth.
And whatever the truth was
is now lost to this lie.

And the only thing I learned this year was...

We become the lies we tell ourselves.

So I guess the only real question is
what lies are you going to tell?
Because once you become those lies
the person you were before you told them is lost.
But you already know all of this.
You've already heard these lies before.

This isn't a poem,
It’s only a thought.
This isn't a poem,
My mind’s just starting to rot.

This isn't a poem,
Don’t read it like one.
This isn't a poem,
I just have no where to run.

This isn't a poem,
Please understand.
This isn't a poem,
I’m just another man.

This isn't a poem,
At least not to me.
This isn't a poem,
It’s just a place I can breath.

She made me feel the way a sunset colors the sky. Her flowing hair rolled over her shoulder blades like ocean waves cresting on the sandy shores of some forgotten paradise. The way she walked -or rather- the way she carried herself, was as if her every movement was conducted by the the wind itself. She was poetry and I was helpless to become a poet in her wake. But she was cold, Her heart was bone dry like a winter night and her motives made alcohol turn to ice. The curve of her hips perfectly replicated a trigger and I could think of no sweeter death than to have one of her bullets be that last thing to go through my mind. It was then I realized how a man could play Russian roulette. The way her lips pursed every time she saw me made me understand why men went to war. Her hands fit the curve of my neck like a noose and there was nothing I wanted to do but hang. Looking at her was staring at the sun and it wasn't until I met her that I understood what my mother meant when she told me not to touch a hot stove, because things that glow often burn us. Yet just like the hot stove, I failed to learn this until I tried.

You know, after meeting her it’s easy to understand why hurricanes are named after people, although I can’t say for certain if they name storms subsequently in her honor or out of pure lust. I really want to know what’s going on inside of her head. I can’t seem to stop thinking about her eyes. All storms have eyes, true, but hers seem to be calmer than the rest. I mean - so there she is, right? - the first time you see her, she doesn't notice you, yet you can’t help but understand. The way she reads books is like she’s memorizing scripture. She carries a sense of reverence with her I’ve only experienced when someone talks about God and I’ve been thinking about her eyes and cathedrals. I’ve been thinking about what it might be like to be her favorite hoodie. Her smile, whether it’s genuine or not, tears me in two and I am ******* afraid of her with lipstick on. I’m afraid that if I tell her I want to kiss her she will think I mean kiss her and not “kiss her”. I wonder if anyone’s ever tried touching her soul. Marble statues know her name, and not for the reasons you’d expect. I’m thinking about her eyes again. I want to know what’s going through her mind when I look at her and see her eyes. After meeting her, it’s easy to understand why my mom warned me about addictions. The kind of addictions where the thought of bare skin and bed sheets leaves you in a cold sweat. The innocent idea of her lips has you craving a feeling that doesn’t exist. Where you’d give every poem you had for just a drop of her eyes. After her, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to look at the stars the same way without wondering how their shine always falls short of reaching the space between her skin and mine. She’s a work of art cast in skin and bone. Eyes. She’s the calm during the storm. I once read somewhere that the girls you read about in books don't exist, but as I watch the way she turns pages like shes being reborn, or the way she walks in late to class sometimes and the whole world seems to notice as the gravity of the room shifts all its attention to her, it’s hard to believe she wasn’t written perfectly to play her part. The way she baptized the asphalt with my car left me reborn at the other end of the steering wheel. You know, she once told me, “It’s crazy to me to think about how most people don't have these problems.” And all I could think about was how to a blank canvas, paint must seem like scars, yet to the artist it’s a release. Eyes, but this time they’re closed. The whole storm, passing around us in a constant story line at 100 miles per hour, and here she is, just as lost as everyone else. Sometimes I fear that my hands might break her, but then I remember that a storm lives beneath her skin and end up thinking about her eyes.

Waiting.
I’m always waiting.
  I lie awake at night waiting.
   I don’t sleep out of fear that I’ll miss it.
    I live in constant anxiety that I will miss what I've been waiting for.
  
    I’m also afraid that I’m not quite sure what I have been waiting for.
   I guess that’s why I’m afraid I’ll miss it.
  I guess that’s why I’m waiting.
I’m always waiting.
Waiting.

We’ll meet again some day, once again as strangers.
We might talk for a bit,
maybe even pretend like we don’t remember what happened.
Maybe we’ll run into each other in a coffee shop,
you with your new love and me with mine.
We’ll act like old friends should,
but your familiar face won't carry familiar feelings.
To know I've been replaced is disheartening.
To think about what we once were makes me wistful.
It’s even more sombering to think of what we are now, strangers.
How is it that someone who once meant so much can become nothing more than a stranger?
Emotions are now rendered into nothing but memories.
Memories are now distorted from hopeful wishes.
Hopeful wishes are now abandoned like a coin into a wishing well.
Yet even after everything that happened,
I can’t help but hope that somewhere, somehow,
We’ll meet again some day, once again as strangers.

And I think the part that hurts the most is that even though I jumped through hoops for you,
Even though I emptied my wallet, and spent all the ink I owned writing pages of poetry for you, and through all the nights where we drove for hours into the silence, singing our broken hearts out, spilling our worries out of the windows of my car as we escaped into the unknown, and with all the nights we laid under the stars and just watched as they all burned out into the sunrise, and the nights we spent sleeping in the back of my car listening to your favorite bands play through the stereo of those perfect moments, and after everything I did to try and show you how much you meant to me, to show you how beautiful you are, it all meant nothing to you, and that’s what hurts the most. Knowing that the next guy that comes wandering, broken hearted and hopelessly, down your path, will hear the same story I did,
How no one cares for you and how you've never had anyone to call your own or anyone to hold close, and how everyone leaves, and how you'd give anything to find that guy, and he too will **** himself over you until you get bored of him and disappear once more. But that's how you are, smoke and mirrors, a cold heart and a shy smile, and knowing that no matter what stories you tell your next victims, I loved every last part of you.
That's what hurts the most.

I can feel the cold setting in.
Each morning is more bitter and frostbitten than the last.
The air and my thoughts are becoming stale, dry, and unpleasant.
The sun does not warm me anymore.
Like me it seems to have become weary.
The birds are gone.
All life seems to have abandoned this place.
Ice clings to my bedroom window, begging to expire in the warmth of a living room fire.
Smoke rises from the chimneys, covering this world in cold ashes and grey.
A life of color now painted banal and mundane.
I can feel the frozen air seeping in, slowly chilling me to my core.
With every passing night I grow colder and slower.
I have become eternally internally tired.
I end each dream embracing the boreal winds.
Ice evaporates into my thoughts.
I can feel the cold setting in.

And just like that the rain was gone.
The puddles were the only thing that remained.
They reminded me of the rain.
How it fell so beautifully,
How it spoke so softly,
How it left without saying goodbye.
All that remains now are the puddles,
Until they too wither away in silence.

Trapped.
Once Again.
Unable to talk.
Silent.

Panicked.
Once again.
Frozen in thought.
Mute.

Afraid.
Once again.
Gasping for air.
Incoherent.

Withdrawn.
Once again.
Crying for release.
Wordless.

You are nothing
close to a poet,
but the way you walk
And
the way you smile,
it’s ******* poetry.