from miles away i can see you erasing me.
you might not feel it, but i do.
i know you are.
it always goes this way.

from miles away i can see you erasing me,
and i want to shout at you, to tell you to stop,
but i have always been quiet in the moments when it would matter most to be loud.

i wish i could go long without love.

i will never ask for a second chance because you would then ask when you ever gave me a first one.
because you would break me down.
so erase me.

this is burning bridges still being built;
this is the familiar taste.
i wish i could go long without love. i wish it could have been different.

are you content watching the flames?

this is being sorry.
this is not knowing what to say.
i never know what to say.
i wish i could go long without love but i can't.

from miles away i can see you erasing me.
i am sorry that my desires never manifest themselves into something beautiful.

i wish i could
                    love.

i
        long.

from miles away i can see you erasing me,
so erase.
perhaps it will be better for the both of us.

(a.m.)

it is a bit past 3 AM and i am waiting for you to see me.
see me, see me.

you told me to write you a poem so here it is.

i am invisible and i am waiting for you to see me.
i cannot make myself seen, i cannot make you look.
so i wait. i wait, for it is all i can do and i cannot live with the feeling of doing
nothing.
powerlessness, in its all its bitter comfort, cradles me like an old friend.

a reconnection.

right now i am putting on the record we both like and i am pretending that you and i are the only ones who have ever heard it.
in a brighter moment i might sing.
in a brighter moment you might see me.

but for now, invisible,
i dance. my feet kiss the floor and my fingers kiss these keys and i am writing you the poem you wanted and waiting, waiting, always waiting.

you may not see me but i will write as if you do.

(a.m.)

you write poems
about lost love,
broken hearts,
and failed redemption.

you write tragedies
about lonely nights,
crying minds,
and bleeding gashes of regret.

you write monologues
about voiceless mouths,
venomous words,
and inevitable decay.

you write autobiographies
about faded dreams,
unheard whispers,
and vanishing memories.

you write
about what once was.

and i do, too.

though i doubt your poems are about me
like mine are about you.

(a.m.)

this
is my first poem
with no capital letters.

and i don't know
why it matters so much,
because the height
or shape
of a letter
has nothing at all to do
with what you are trying to say
or how you feel,
if, of course,
you are one of those lucky few
who feels anything at all.

(a.m.)

i can never really organize my thoughts,
so much to the point that
at one moment
i might be thinking that nothing could be worse
than it already is,
but at the next,
i might be admiring the beauty of life,
and how everything is grand,
and how i can almost see the sparkles that emerge from the stardust in your veins.

i can never really stick to one thing,
so much to the point that,
at one moment
i might be writing lines of poetry about veins brimming with stardust,
but at the next,
i may be considering what an utter cliché
that line is.

i can never really make up my mind,
so much to the point that,
at one moment
i might be intent on the idea that stardust as a whole
is a cliché, cliché, cliché,
but at the next,
i may not care at all.

who gives a ****?

it's not about what's cliché and what's not.

it's simply about the thoughts,
the words,
the beauty.

all at once.

but the problem with me is,
i can never really organize my thoughts,
so much to the point that
at one moment
i might be pouring my thoughts into this poem,
but at the next,
my mind might be frozen.
e m p t y .
bare.

sometimes my mind
doesn't like to cooperate.
but as of now,
it is.

and i've decided
that stardust
is a total cliché.

i do not doubt, though,
that it is one hell of a beautiful cliché,
perhaps much like my mind.

(a.m.)

10:17 p.m.

And still,
I couldn't bring myself
To tell her I loved her,
Because of fear of what had happened
The last time I loved someone.

Because of fear
That the part of me
That was whispering,
Shouting,
Screaming,
To stay away,
To not fall in love
Might be right.

Because of fear
That I would break her heart
And she'd break mine,
And we'd both go back to being broken
Just as quickly as we had taped ourselves back together,
Piece by piece.

Because of fear
That she wouldn't
Feel the same way.

Because of fear
That my feelings
Wouldn't be genuine.

Because of fear
Of repeating the past.

(a.m.)

When it's raining
I can't decide
If it's the sky
Screaming out in agony,
With broken roars of thunder
And brilliant, crashing streaks of lightning
Or
If it's the sky
Releasing all it has to offer
In gentle tears of rain
Filled with all the sorrows
And regrets
Of its blue wonderland.

Maybe the sky
Is never sure how
To release all its anger,
All its sadness,
All its confusion.
And so on some days
It rains,
Crying softly.
And on others,
It screams
And shouts
With thunder.

Maybe we
Are like the sky.

(a.m.)

i hope you see this.

i don't know what i would want you to feel if you did see this.

anger?

sadness?

pain?

would you even know it was for you?

look,
i don't want to dwell
on the unimportant details,
like who's fault it was,
or who left first.

maybe it was you,
maybe it was me,
maybe it was both of us.

i don't care much.

the important part is that you're gone.

i am gone.

we are gone.

i am not the person i once was, and i doubt you are the person you once were.

whether that's a good or bad thing,
i don't know.

what i do know is that everything is falling.

but whether it's falling into or out of place?

well,
i don't know that either.

(a.m.)

i am not one to glamorize smoking,
but there is something recklessly beautiful about new york
and the way each cloud of smoke on every city street rolls
with a detached aggression
from cherry onwards —
like a demon knowingly conjured.

it is a slow suicide so defiant it is almost admirable.

almost.

but like most things called admirable at first glance
and detestable
at second,
there is an ugly side.

new york, though,
doesn’t know ugly — never has, never will —
and even when it does it is a
“between the lines” kind of ugly:
the spitting up of blood bright and red —
cherry —
at home, behind closed doors,
not cool and casual on the city streets.

new york doesn’t know ugly.
and so slow suicides become
park bench pastimes and
throats filled with smokes become synonymous with:
“living life to the fullest in the heart of new york city”
and the way each cloud of smoke on every city street rolls
with a detached aggression
from cherry onwards becomes
almost admirable.

almost.

(a.m.)

today my gums bled when i brushed my teeth,
and i thought of making some metaphor
about how efforts to attain purity
only result in more stains,
but no.
it was just blood.

to call a rose — or torn gums — by any other name
is to silence the initial sting,
but it still ends up hurting more in the end.
it always does.
lying always does.

and if all i have are my words,
what am i if my words are lies?

what am i if i cannot be honest?

a bad writer, perhaps.
but trying.
i am also trying.

there are some days when the blood looks
a little less like words on a page,
and simply a little more like red,
and i am hopeful.

yet still i know
that efforts to attain purity
only result in more stains,
and red is a ***** to clean out.

(a.m.)

hey
Delivered 10:36 p.m.

we haven’t talked in a while
Delivered 10:36 p.m.

weeks
Delivered 10:36 p.m.

maybe even months, actually
Delivered 10:37 p.m.

truth is, i can’t remember the last time we talked
Delivered 10:37 p.m.

and, wow this going to sound crazy, but
Delivered 10:38 p.m.

i saved our last conversation. i keep reading over it, trying to figure out where i went wrong
Delivered 10:38 p.m.

but i can never find it
Delivered 10:38 p.m.

i can never find that one place where i ******* up, where i said something wrong, where i did something to tear us apart, or make you hate me.
Delivered 10:39 p.m.

and it *****, it really does.
Delivered 10:39 p.m.

matter of fact, “*****” isn’t a strong enough word to describe how awful it is
Delivered 10:40 p.m.

or how awful i feel
Delivered 10:40 p.m.

hurt
Delivered 10:40 p.m.

betrayed
Delivered 10:40 p.m.

used
Delivered 10:40 p.m.

and do you want to know what the worst part is?
Delivered 10:41 p.m.

the worst part, aside from the fact that i can’t figure out where i went wrong, is that, even after all of this
Delivered 10:41 p.m.

i still love you
Delivered 10:42 p.m.

i have loved you, i love you now, and i’m pretty **** sure i will love you in the future.
Delivered 10:43 p.m.

and i guess that’s half of what i came here to say.
Delivered 10:43 p.m.

but it’s obvious that you don’t feel the same.
Delivered 10:44 p.m.

and so i suppose that the other half of what i came here to say
Delivered 10:44 p.m.

is goodbye.
Delivered 10:44 p.m.

and though i’m sure that all your love for me has faded
Delivered 10:44 p.m.

and that my name hasn’t slipped off your ******* long time
Delivered 10:45 p.m.

all i ask of you is one thing
Delivered 10:45 p.m.

just don’t forget me.
**Delivered 10:46 p.m.

clocks
ticking,
minutes dripping away
like soft syrup.

and yet,
we all say
to live in the moment,
live in the moment,
consume it,
be consumed by it,
waste no time.

so why is it then,
that here we still are,
having done nothing?

nothing good,
nothing bad,
nothing worthwhile.

time stops for no one, darling.

the clocks
are still there,
ticking,
minutes dripping away
like soft syrup.

funny,
how you must think
you've got all the time in the world.

(a.m.)

Train 85 leaves the station and bursts into the blinding sunlight with a surreal suddenness. Below, to the left of the tracks, a field of wheat sways as though still under a summer sun. Golden-brown and lively in spite of the snow resting at its roots. The blinding sun hangs high, glimmering on the water. It gives me a headache. I try to ignore it.

Ahead of me, the laughter of two young people fills the car. I wonder if they are strangers, engaged in conversation just minutes after meeting. I wonder if they have the same destination, if they are each equally happy to be heading towards it.

To my right, across the aisle, a woman no older than fifty talks loudly on the phone about her father’s tumor and the biopsy that will soon determine if it is cancer. She sounds optimistic, and I am happy for her. I tread lightly on the thought that maybe her loud optimism is a front. I want to be happy for her. But in an hour I will get off this train, and if her father dies, I will never know.

The woman sitting next to me returns from the café car with a Dunkin' Donuts coffee and takes out her laptop. I turn down my brightness so that she can’t see that I am writing about her. Even though I write nothing bad, it feels like some sick invasion of privacy.

My fingers feel heavy. This train feels heavy.

I want to be outside, before the sun sets, while the golden-brown wheat is still bathed in light. The sun is going to set without me. I try to be okay with that.

The last time I ever wrote on an Amtrak — the last time I can remember —, it was a song about loneliness and self-destruction. It was more than two years ago. I want to be able to say that I have changed more than I actually have. But even as the world rushes past me, snow and wheat and house and sun, I still feel impossibly lonely. The heaviness from my fingers is in all of me now. I can’t shake it.

The young people ahead of me, the woman across the aisle, and the woman next to me all begin talking at once now, and I feel hot. Their words bounce back and forth off the walls, and I need to get off of this train. Receiving these airborne snippets of other lives feels wrong, feels overwhelming.

Anyone who reads this piece will think I’m insane.

The woman next to me stops speaking. The young people ahead of me quiet down. The woman across the aisle is engaged in some other conversation that I can’t exactly make out. It’s quieter. I might still break the windows of this train if I could, but it is quieter. My fingers feel a little less heavy. It is quieter. At least the insanity is in words now.

i. before

everything about her was light,
soft,
inviting.
her voice was gentle,
her eyes calm.
she walked
as if she was floating,
and her lips
were always curved
into a sweet smile.
she often wondered
how anything could go wrong.

ii. after**

everything about her was dark,
broken,
toxic.
her voice was venomous,
her eyes piercing.
she walked
as if she'd had a bit too much to drink
and her lips
were always curved
into a sour scowl.
she often wondered
how she lost herself.

(a.m.)

how can i possibly tell you
*all i need to?

i don't know if you remember it. those times when i was in love with you. maybe they're shoved in the back of your brain, in a cabinet marked 'useless.' you might never meet me, anyway. why should you care?
i don't know if you know that you broke me. but you did. i don't blame you, though. why would you want me, anyway?
i don't know if you still bring a blade to your precious skin because you think you're worthless. but you aren't. you're so incredible. your mind still amazes me. and i love you. i may not be in love with you, but i love you. and i want to be in love with you.
i don't know if you still think of me. i know you probably don't.
but, god, i hope you do.

dearly,
a.m.

I THOUGHT I WAS OVER YOU BUT IT'S SO OBVIOUS THAT I'M NOT BECAUSE EVERY TIME I SEE YOUR FACE AND YOUR LIPS AND YOUR BEAUTIFUL EYES MY CHEST STARTS TO HURT AND I IMAGINE THAT I AM DROWNING IN MY OWN BLOOD, AND I BEGIN TO GET BUTTERFLIES BUT NOT THE ONES FROM FIRST GRADE WHEN LOVE WAS JUST AN ILLUSION, BECAUSE THESE BUTTERFLIES ARE TEARING MY HEART APART STRING BY STRING, YET I AM COMPLETELY FINE WITH IT BECAUSE IT'S ALL FOR YOU.

i can't help but laugh at the fact
that you're wasting your life away
on something so
very terribly evanescent.

(a.m.)

All it took
Was one phrase,
Three words,
Seventeen letters
To realize
She was more broken
Than I thought.

(a.m.)