My grief was only ever her fault insofar as it was "her fault" for falling asleep in my arms.

it's the car crash that nobody was around to see, nobody to call for help
it's the drop from the precipice that never ended
that sensation in your gut of sickening weightlessness
forever in perpetuity
it's this daily unanswered call
an echo unreturned
it's this constant hesitation
this wavering sensation of incompletion
a melody with no conclusion, unresolv-

Arms clasped around the small of your back as you stared up at me in the elevator
My heart was ready to burst*

"You were the best thing that ever happened to me," I said. "And then the worst."

Two strangers grazing hands on a crowded train, neither saying a word nor pulling away, simply acknowledging each other's warmth

An irrational fixation, an aberration of sense and reason, a heart committed to treason, betraying the self and the pursuit of peace

Hello, I miss you
Sometimes I tell strangers about you,
Sometimes you're still all I think about
And sometimes I wonder if all I have left is a really good story

The things you left in the past could have changed your life
The things that wouldn't last, still alive, just barely
A tempestuous undeath unto your frail memory
Just trying to make it through another day

Imagine loving someone with the diligence and care of a blind person reading Braille, fingers scanning bumps, tactile derivation of understanding

Entitled to be untitled, blank forgotten gravestone, smooth marble untainted with dates and memories

Escape unscathed, no scratches, no scars,
No doubts or hopes or doors left ajar

Clean, empty, pure desistance, an insistence to embrace the nothing inside us all

I apologize as I dry her eyes
And I know that I'll never be enough for her
Two pieces from different puzzles
And I'm still puzzled how I ever found her
Incongruent, I ******* blew it
And I'm still trying to make sense of it all
I laugh, there's no number to call
And she's gone as I continue to fall

I stared at the sunset, fading, shedding its radiant tears smeared across the sky, purple, blue pastels
And counted the seconds I had left to hold your hand
I see you in everyone else's grief
And I never really stopped to think what "You're dead to me" really feels like
Not malicious, no, just an unmarked tombstone in my head I visit on occasion to pay respects and remember a beautiful mistake

Do you talk to your mother
about me when you drink?
Do whispering thoughts undulate
from your subconscious,
yearning to be heard?

Go on and carry me as your burden
I won't say a word and
I'll breathe in this sulfurous shame
And suffer the same
As I have for so long

I'm tired of music being about you
Every note sings as images run through my head like a projector I can't shut off
I got to thinking, (I've always been thinking),
But I got to thinking and here goes:
The difference between me and a dog is that I know you'll never come back

The thought of holding your hand nearly drove me to tears this morning
It was not the taste of your lips, nor the way your eyes pierced right through me,
A chain reaction of thoughts led me to the hopeless memory of simply clutching your hand as you drove along

You, you beautiful cancer, still pollute everything

This life has taught me that we are promised nothing,
Least of all that love will listen when you simply ask for it to *stay

A skeleton structurally unsound
Every bone vibrating with
The echoes of *goodbye

carving an incisive
incision into the core of
my most potent vulnerabilities

Let's make an effort to age this sadness for 16 years
Will it hold weight then?
Will it be a tangible thing that you can hold, and hug and touch?
Will it have a taste of metallic blood or simply smell like the musty wood of forgotten time?
Let's bottle it away
Give it time to mature
And maybe one day we can both sample the fruits of this labor

I poured a double
Try to forget you a while
I'll be back again

Vital signs inviting death
Take my last breath
I want to be free
Take this life from me
Thoughts of you in my head
Just leave me for dead
Watching this time accrue
I'm sorry, I love you

Here I am again at the corner of "What the **** am I doing?" and "I miss you."

We didn't turn out to be a fairy tale,
And instead I'm sleeping with a girl I text, "Come over tonight."
I kiss her with open eyes. It's a moist charade.
She keeps my bed warm though.

I wonder if you're happy
I'm still vague on the term
I just try to keep busy

It's getting harder to write you
But these notebooks won't fill themselves
I trust you will wait

Deep in my chest you carved your name
Fresh blood rushes to fill the ridges, trying
Dragged away by current

I bite my hand every time I think of:
Water streaming down your body
Rivulets running from your neck
Tracing your delicate collarbones
Rolling off your soft *******

I bite my hand every time I think of:
Our limbs entwined
Connecting, exploring
Your eyes staring into mine
Analyzing, imploring

I bite my hand
A curious reflex developed
The pain perhaps to snap back to reality
Or perhaps to give my anguish life

(n.)*: the length of silence elapsed after quietly saying, *"Please don't leave"

She prefers silence to words
Redundant noises vibrating emptily like the buzzing wings of a gnat
Her quiet will shatter you like a bullet through a windowpane

But look at old photographs, see her beam
Look closely and you can see the sadness seeping through her smile
She's seen enough to know what's worth suffering for
And she knew you weren't worth the fight

"Don't give up on me," she wrote
As if that decision was ever mine to make

Every day a page is written in this outrageous book of life
It's distressing how distressed these pages are

It doesn't matter
So many stories are being written in parallel
Co-authors of love and destruction
******* and screaming

I would have created volumes with you
Libraries would have stood as monuments to us

But as it stands I'm just writing epitaphs to everything I've ever lost
And at what ******* cost
And it doesn't matter
It doesn't matter

It's all in my head
And there it will die