There are ghosts of you.
In words that don’t matter.
Ones I forget until I say them in a moment of absent mindedness and realize I do because of you.

I keep hopping on planes hoping I’ll lose my feelings in the cities I’m leaving.

I keep having vivid dreams about you.
Almost every night.
Last night I had one that felt so real.
I was telling you how heartbroken I was and you were blowing it off, like you didn’t believe me.

Then you said:
“It’s dumb for someone like you to be that heartbroken about a guy like me.”

Was it actually just my subconscious or maybe it was something else, could it be real? Were we communicating on a dream plane?

Loving after you is like rewatching a stand up special. I feel obligated to laugh because the room is, but the jokes no longer feel funny.

Loving after you is like rereading a book. I already know all the good parts. I reread the lines but they do not bring the same feeling. Only the memory of how I felt the first time they leaped off the page.

Loving after you is like Wholefood’s peach cobbler. A ghostly whisper of another thing. A should be delight immediately compared to a better memory in my grandma’s kitchen. Making me miss the creaking wood floors and her presence even more as I wonder if it’s worth the calories.

Every time my phone buzzes.
I hope it’s you.

I am more happy around him than without him.
Despite his half-affection.
It’s not that he’s not trying, or not being nice.
He cuddles me and buys me flowers-
But that doesn’t conceal the way his eyes don’t whisper I love you anymore.

Where am I?
“You’re dead.” They said.

“It was quick, that’s why you have no memory. No pain, you came straight here.”

And where is here?

“Heaven of course”

Right right.
Well, glad I made it.
So what’s next? Do I go inside?

“Nope first you have to settle up your will.”

My will? Like my last will and testament?

“Yep!”

I think I did one of those, when I was living?

“No no sorry... not the will of your earth stuff. The will of your energy.”

My what?

“Your energy. The energy that was given to you upon birth.”

What do you mean?

“Energy never dies, it just goes into other things.”

Ok... sorry i’m still a little lost.

“You know when you felt like someone who died is with you? Or you get a sense they are watching out for you?”

Yes... of course.

“Did you think that was just in your head? Your emotions getting the better of you?”

Well kind of...

“Wrong! That’s their energy. They willed a portion of their energy to you. That’s why you felt them. They gave you a piece of themselves. It’s the most core thing you can will.”  

Wow. So I get to choose who feels those moments with me?

“Yes. Yes you do.”

Ok this might take a while...

“Don’t take too long, all of the people who willed to you - they’re right inside so excited to see you.”

Let me cut them out.
Let me cut out all the good memories from our story.  
Let me paste them together.
Let me paste them into a collage that shows my happiness.
Happiness I only feel with you.
And hope.
Hope you create in me.

I got angry at you today.
But I don’t think it’s my fault that I want to be exactly where you are all the time.
After all, you made me this way.

If the me of the past, present and future could sit me down for a cup of tea.
Oh god how interesting would that be. What would she tell me?
What parts of me are real and which ones are just phases?
How do I find my “true self” and does even that, go through changes?
Is there no right me except the one that can handle the now?
Or is there a best me, that is trying to break out?

Milk
Eggs
Red wine
Parm cheese
Hands held
Your embrace
Half-awake kisses

On that balcony in Paris -
I wanted to call you with every fiber of me.

Like a life-long smoker trying to not light that cigarette wedged between his fingers.

Shaking.

I was an addict craving my next fix.
The withdrawals of you stung.
My body ached for you.

I knew you were poison.

I didn’t call you that night.
I wasn’t miraculously strong after.

But that was the first night I said no.
And I wasn’t sure if I could.

It was the first time that fresh air was inhaled where I felt in control.

I wanted to so badly. But didn’t.

That wasn’t the end, it took more pain before that happened.

But I am still proud looking back to that balcony.

If I am anything, I am persevering.

Maybe you just always need someone to be kinda sad about. Someone to think about when all too well comes on.

The goodbye that flashes into memory when you watch a romantic movie.
Maybe people need that.
Maybe I need that.

The void will always be filled by someone until there is an equally powerful opposite emotion to take its place.

He just feels like mine.
Not in a possessive way just in a fitting way.
Like that solid color puzzle piece you’ve had to the side waiting to see where it goes.
And then finally you see it.
Like oh, yes- of course.
Of COURSE it goes there.
How could it not?
How could it ever go anywhere else?

Like a snake shedding its skin all the old layers of me left in the tight spaces along my path.

Each layer gone reveals something brighter and shinier. Or was it the same amount of shine of that old layer when it was new?

Is it better or just different?

I subconsciously opened the calculator on my phone. Like I was going to take the sum of me.

We raced to the beach to catch the sunset
Parking quickly and running out
Many others had done the same.

I look to my right and realize over 100
People are on this beach to watch
The sun leave us over the horizon.

We talk about previous civilizations’
Religious rituals
In that moment, I realized I was in one.

I hope you have a favorite tree.
I hope learn to cook your grandma’s dishes.
I hope you realize at least once when you are talking to an old aunt that you should just slow down and listen to her ramble about the neighborhood gossip knowing you won’t always have her.
I hope you look forward to dessert and bring out the bottle of champagne you were saving for a special occasion, because life is a special occasion.

You be the church, I’ll be the steeple.
I’ll shout my love for you to all of the people.
Let it be seen from blocks away.
Let no winding road or large oak hide my exaltation of you.
I can not pack you away with the ***** in the basement.
The hymns must be sung.
Let us rise.

The first morning we woke up together
& I looked over to see your hand interlocked within mine.

I knew you had me.

I have a suspicion there is something I am supposed to be looking forward to.

Is that you?

I had this dream where I was recalling stories of us. Of all the things we’d done together.

I was sitting on the side of a bathtub, telling my mother.

How we met, how we’d always been intertwined, how we grew up together.

And then I say, and then we moved into together, and had kids built a family.

And my mom responded “Right, just not in this timeline.”

And I realized I was my single self, not with him, not with his kids. And I was recalling us from another life.

Like elastic being stretched apart,
Only to be slapped back together again once the resistance eases.
I crash back into you every. ****. time.

It’s not my fault I love you so.
You made me like this.
It’s not my fault you were burned by another.
I cannot erase those scars, but I promise I am cool to the touch.
I do not want to disconnect.
Don’t make me.
I can go on without you and I’ll be fine.
Maybe that would be easier.
But I don’t want easier.
I don’t want to stop loving you.

that's it. that's the story.

If there’s one ******* thing in this world I never want to stop seeing. It’s your smile, your real smile, when you look at me.

If something triggers an unexpected love-struck memory quick enough, my heart still skips a beat.

It forgets he isn’t real.
He never was the man I fell in love with.

Everywhere I imagine myself going-
The vacations I have yet to plan.
Cities I have not yet seen.
I imagine waking up there with you.

I am not damaged.
I am loved and lovable.
I will continue to open myself to love.
Radiate it.
Seek it out.
Call it out.
I will be the love I am searching for.

I didn’t need this city to create magic.
I needed me - fully unleashed, raw and unapologetic.

LA was just the place I finally allowed that to manifest.

They said they just knew.

“I knew they were the one.“

What a powerful thing to know.

How much uncertainty gets taken out of life. Because they knew.

The bar is set high.
Do you know?
Do you know like they knew?
Don’t you want... to know?

You reminded me I haven’t found what I’ve always wanted...yet.

It always surprises me when I somehow still shed tears for you.

I keep thinking it will be the last time. Then it happens again.

Run run run just as fast as you can
You can’t catch me
I’m
Chasing after my next win.
While the enthusiasm I have for my current venture soaks in slowly like syrup into the cedar floor.
Why do I love to run so much?
Why can’t I be happy at a truce?
Why can’t I stand in resolve at the finish line?
Why does the finish line never feel like the real finish line?
There must be another right?
This can’t be it?... Right?

Some things we feel are real.
Some are not.
The phantom phone vibration in your pocket.
The effects of the placebo pill.
The spiritual awakening.
The new disciple who was touched by God.
We can feel anything if we want it bad enough.

“It’s so close I can feel it.”

Are the hymns sung in every pew in vain?
Are we all just trying to feel something?


But then again, who knows.
Your lips feel Holy to me.

If an even match cannot exist
Let the underdog be me

I do not mind punching above my class

If there must be fighter and a settler
Let me become black and blue

Until my lip is swollen and the count is through

If there is a hill to climb
Let me grab my hiking boots and stick

I will climb to the top if no other reason than to take a pic

If you tell me I can’t
Let me promise you, I must

There is something about a new challenge that if not taken on makes me want to combust

& most importantly
if equal affection cannot be
Let the more loving one, be me

If I had to choose a flower to be
I’d choose the phlox on the side of the road I see
Interlaced within the fences
Little metal squares and wooden posts their only defenses

And when summer goes, I will too.
And I know I could choose a flower that’s in ever bloom.

But the free, un-mowed phlox is more me.

He leaned against the wall above me, one arm over my head and as he looked down I said “this is it.”  

“What?” He looked into my eyes as if there was a teleprompter inside with the answer scrolling on dim explaining what I meant.

“This…” I lose track of my words while meeting his gaze.

“This. Is as happy as I get.”