tonight, darkness engulfs,
as it usually does.
the sun hides its shame behind the light of the moon,
only to rise with renewed power in the morning.

i find myself wishing i could speak to the sun.

if i could,
i'd ask it to stay down,
to linger in its dormancy,
to grant me the luscious solitude of the night
for just a little while longer.

because for once i am okay.

for once, i find my mind quiet --
knowing all the things that are painful to know,
and yet not holding too tight to them.

and i enjoy it,
this silence -- of mind and of world.
but i am not naive,
and i know that the sun will not spare me,
will not spare anyone,
nor will it give so much as a whisper
in response to all my feeble wishes.

so for tonight,
all i have is tonight.

all i have are the few sunken hours before dawn
when i can be at least somewhat free --
freer than i've been for a long while.

and that, though momentary,
is enough.

(a.m.)

All I know is that you make me want to write and no one else makes me feel that way.

it's nice to know that you think of me sometimes.
that my name forms on the tip of your tongue.
that i cross your mind.

it's nice to know that sometimes you might see something that reminds you of me.
it's nice to know that i'm still there,
that i haven't disappeared or gone silent in your head.

it's nice to know that i still matter,
even if it's only in the slightest bit.

after all, that's all i ever wanted.

(a.m.)

it’s interesting to think about all the right people who might’ve come into your life at the wrong time.
but then again,
i often wonder if time could’ve saved or wrecked us at all.
maybe from the start, we were destined to be nothing more than strangers.
even if i had been weighed down, glued to one spot,
nomadic tensions silenced,
it seems likely that, still, our friendly smiles and cordial jokes would’ve been
limited, somehow,
by unseen barriers,
by the cruel overseer that is fate.

i think i meant something to you, once.
not a lot, but something.
and now,
now i’m just there.
a solid. something that takes up space.
you still sit close to me,
but not as close as you did when we first met.

and i wonder, sometimes, if i did something wrong,
if there was something i could’ve done, or not done, to change things,
to make things better,
to stop us from drifting silently onto the end of the growing list of tragedies my life’s friendships have been.

but maybe there was nothing i could do.
that thought, while terrifying, is perhaps the most comforting one.
after all, it is better to be left helpless from the start than to be burdened with the knowledge that the stones you threw became part of the landslide.

i hope, maybe, that we can salvage what’s left,
perhaps even grow it into something better.
but somewhere inside, i know that’s fool’s talk.
i doubt i ever meant much to you, anyway.
i always was, and always will be, just another shadow,
another stranger,
another change of season.
i suppose i was your winter —
a barrage of snow and ice that danced in clumsily,
not bothering to think about what would happen once spring came.

i hope you’ll remember me when i’m gone.
even now, it’s nice to think that i cross your mind as much as you cross mine.
but my hopes seldom match my reality.

so, still, i am just another.
watching.
waiting.
being.
i am nothing, and in being nothing i suppose that i, too, am everything.

but i will never be your everything.

and i could say that i regret that,
but perhaps i’m still holding onto that last bit of hope.

always the optimist,
and yet even more so the pessimist.

i thought you might be both, too.
i thought we might find a way to complete one another,
much like how the land completes the sea.

but i suppose i am left the earth without its ocean,
the ground without its rain.

it’s a horrible thing, detachment.
my roots never quite find what they’re looking for in the soil.

i had just hoped you would be different.

(a.m.)

It was four o'clock in the morning. Robert wondered why his name was Robert. He decided to get rid of the "Bert" because it was the name of a Sesame Street character or the name of a ******* in Tempe, Arizona. Then again, he thought, "Hey, just Rob makes me sound like I change tires for a living or that I work out at a gym that discriminates fat people and blacks." Rob or Robert took a second to evaluate his last thought and if thinking "and blacks" made him a racist person.

Robert sat on a bench and wondered if the woman beside him was expecting Forest Gump-esque wisdom.

Robert thought of a friend he had in grade eight, named Alexander. He thought of how Alexander had a glass eye. Robert wondered how Alexander had a glass eye but could not remember or did not know why Alexander had a glass eye. Robert, then, concluded that sometimes he will not know something and how that is okay because most people don't know anything--it's a collection of approximates that stay in our heads, he thought. Robert asked himself if his last thought made him intelligent or dumb and pretentious. Robert decided that he did not know. How meta, he thought. Robert, then, decided to stop using the word "meta" so much, because it made him feel like a professor with bitterness and something to prove.

Robert watched his sister struggle with an eating disorder. She was in a hospital bed, with an IV in her arm. Robert did not know if he would struggle with anything as hard as his sister struggled with anorexia. Robert, then, had intense but fleeting anger at every person that bragged about being anorexic or made it seem cool.

Robert sat on his toilet and wondered what his true identity was and what his true nature was. He wondered what was inherent and what was synthetic. Robert, then, wondered if a synthetic personality was inherent. Robert asked himself if he was a good person. He wasn't sure if sitting on the toilet, in his grandmother's house, and ******* to interracial ebony teen ****, on his iPhone, made him a good person or not. His concerns soon past, though, as soon as Lauren started to **** the pizza guy's white ****.

Robert walked down the street and was contemplating some of the issues that plagued his ****-infested mind, while he was on the toilet. Robert saw a girl running from a guy. Robert asked himself if he was a hero or inherently good. Robert, then, concluded that he was inherently a coward, since he did nothing and hoped that somebody else would save her.

Robert didn't meet a girl and knew that no one would write prose about his meeting a girl and their mutual love for one another. Robert was eating a steak sub, while thinking this.

Robert returned to the hospital, to pick up his sister. On the way home, his sister talked about how attractive her nurse was. Robert asked, "What did he look like?" His sister, then, said, "It wasn't a he. My nurse was a girl." Robert was okay with his sister being attracted to girls, but hoped that she didn't get more than him or more attractive girls than him, because, for some reason, that would make him feel insecure. Robert decided to stop eating so many steak subs and to work out. Robert asked his sister if she wanted to get steak subs. She said, "sure".

Robert was working out in his basement. He heard the sound of retching, upstairs. Robert followed the sound of the vomiting and opened a bathroom door. He saw his sister stick her finger down her throat. He said to his sister, "That isn't anorexia." His sister said, "I know. There's a lot you don't know about me." Robert said, "I'm sorry."