You and I went for a drive today
squeezing ourselves into your car
jostling for space amongst five years worth of love and loss
lapping an aimless mosaic
through  the streets we grew up in.

I say I want to clear the air
looking at the  scars your hands collected since I last saw them
and you say it's funny we are both so stubborn
or we would've spoken sooner
watching the road
with the wry grin that has always stayed with me

Of all the things we talk about,
the hollowness you say you feel is what echos in your face
and the steely timbre in your voice
is so different from the happiness of when we first fell in love,
and I can see it  grip your steering wheel
hidden in your broken knuckles
every time that you accelerate.

Please don't speak to me
about the universal movement of time,
I feel as much as the next human,

days marked by solar rotations
restless nights under changing lunar faces
and the chameleon nature of life as history etches a path in skin.

And while time will while away
pulled along by the ebb and flow of currents,
and history is lost on ancient tides,

pull away my new skin
and underneath as always
you remain the center of my gravity

an infinite pull I can't help but follow.

Why do you still occupy
the nooks and crannies of my head?
Drifting up through the cracks in the plaster
bent nails and poor construction
hammered hastily into place

How do you fill
my vacant minutes with shadows of you?
Your outline walks beside me on the street, wound up in my headphones
the echo of your daydream touch
a humming static on my skin

How still do you fall asleep beside me
when I am wrapped in the disquiet of a restless night?
How do you ease yourself into my brain like its nothing
and hide among synapses that try so hard to lose you

And how still to lose you?
When the thought of you occupies the wasted time
that escapes order and control
and slips under the floorboards

And in that quiet and that dark
is where you and I occupy,
held together by the wandering nature of thoughts,
that find their way into the nooks and crannies of my head

The thought of you is indifferent to my hasty plaster work,
and
the thought of you is intoxicating.

I wanted to write
something to unravel what is going on in my head.
Lyrical sentences to explain madness.

But then I  realised,
FINALLY realised
that you are an *******
of the cruelest kind

and you don't deserve
the time I'll waste
forming my disgust at your immaturity
into beauty.

You stood awkwardly in my doorway to say Hello,
hiding in shadows
and my mouth formed shapes made from the stunted conversation
of strangers,
while my fingers fumbled with the light switch.

I've loved you since we were children
and now a rift the size of oceans separates us,
filled with small talk and broken ships,
and it makes me seasick.

Cold feet hold up the weariest of skeletons.
I am sick of this limbo.

Flinging myself between two hearts in the hope one will sear an imprint
on non-existent flesh.

Nobody can love cold bones
and cold bones can love nobody
when they have no body to love.

What good and what tragedy will come of it?
To reach back through murky time
to air out our togetherness like winter sheets,
in hope the mustiness and dust will disappear.

To wrap you back around my skin,
a blanket of familiarity
so patched, so frayed.
Will the cold shiver through old comfort?