There is a boy
sitting across the table from me,
whose voice cracks like an old record
when he sings hymns and
kindness rests in the color of his eyes.

He is explaining to me that order
scientifically can’t come out of chaos,
how the big bang never really happened because of
the perfect order our lives are set up to be.

The way the consistent order of the solar system
helped humans create the concept of
days, months, and years.

We climbed a tree whose leaves mimicked the
sunset’s arrangement of colors;
we watched the sun simmer into the horizon,
watching this chaos of color come to an orderly end.

My life shifts from one chaotic moment into another.
I remember sitting next to him on the crowded bus,
sides pressed up against each other.
There in that small act, I found order.

However I worried because I heard on the radio
one hot summer ago that us as individuals
need chaos to grow,
but then my name fell from
his mouth and my mind is now repeating
itself with chaotic worries that I
may never find someone like him again.

I tried kissing poetry onto your lips but
I pulled away with a chipped tooth
and a scramble of words swimming
in my mind.

I am still trying to drain out them out
three weeks later.

I know that we are not meant to be.

My dear,
your head just seems to be so high up in the clouds
that they fog your mind and I am lost in it.

You are not searching for clarity
and we are walking blindly.

I wanted answers but all you did was kiss me.

I know that doesn't seem complex,
yet when the twin towers were hit the
conspiracies rose as the people fell.

Who was really in charge of all of this?

I believe that question belonged to both my
situation and the nation.

I thought to myself that you'll talk
and tell me about what was going on in
your mind and if you felt the same way.

But that was like hoping for a blind man to explain
the fear in the people's eyes as they
ran away from the city's blocks of smoke.

For a blind man wouldn't comment on what he couldn't see,
just how you couldn't see how much I cared about you
therefore you didn't comment
let alone compliment.

While they searched for bodies,
I searched for body language.

The aftermath of the towers falling resulted
with no air traffic for a week above the U.S.,
people reported that
the skies had never looked so blue.
I was told the same after the word
"us" had fallen.

I wanted answers but all you did was leave me
with conspiracies questioning if this end was planned.

Oh how we pine and pine and pine over people who act as lumberjacks towards us.

You are an attic that my thoughts are still lost in.
Your mind is cluttered with ideas, kindness, secrets and confessions,
all covered under thick dusty blankets of bland conversations.
Every time the sun hit a part of your mind,
you revealed a memory and I like a child
oohed and ahhed at this over told story.

Despite the floorboards creaking “baby you don’t mean a thing” and dust lingering with the goodbye that will never be said,
it was my favorite place.

I would try bringing up my own newspaper clippings and photo albums but there never was enough room in this attic I suppose.

I remember one night I spotted poetry painted on the wall
hidden behind a pile of blankets and your record player voice cracked with the words ‘you're beautiful’ and ‘you're perfect’.
But maybe the words were already painted for somebody else
and You’re voice caught on the vinyl of the moment.

Darling they told me that a family from Utah is
moving in next week,
I hope they treat you well.

Darling the door has been locked and boarded without a warning

Trains passing through the station are so loud that they scream second guesses into our eardrums about leaving.

Dearest one please silence your sobs
and let your eyes dry.

He is going, going, going.
You’re growing, growing, growing.

Please know that is enough.

Don’t mistake love with coincidence.
He loved you for your little habits
and your soft attitude.
You loved him for the way the room
shifted when he entered it.

You still have your gentle voice and
little ways of life.
Hold onto something when you
see him again, the room will sway.

Please know that is just the way it
will be for a little while.

You loved him.
You may still love him.

But please know that you are
growing, growing, growing.
And he is going, going, going.
And that is enough.

When he texts you with a heavy heart proclaiming that he saw your name in the stars last night and your smile in the suns curve, ignore it. You are not the sun or the stars in the fabric of space, you are a human being with a beating heart that had hoped for far too long for those words to be spoken.

Ask him if before this if he was blinded by the sun or too lost in the stars and that’s why he never responded back those times you told him you missed him.

Ask him how maybe the pressure and weight of his heart before must have been collapsing inside, falling and hitting his lungs and cracking ribs that he couldn’t exhale and respond back. It’s alright now because he’s better now and he can talk now that he see the capability of words.

This means nothing to you for when you see the sun it reminds you of him because that is the first thing you see through your window blinds when he’s really the first thing you want to see in the morning. And when you see the first star appear in the that faded sun soaked sky you wish for him until the sky is cluttered with lights almost as bright as his eyes.

Your heart was so heavy for so long but not anymore.

When he tells you, you will feel dignified and broken at the same time. You will want to go up to him and merrily say all the curse words that you had once washed out of your mouth but then you’ll want to take your hands and caress them to his jawline and look him in the eyes and whisper in a gentle voice that you cared about him so much and he never realized it and still doesn’t.

You will run and laugh and tell your friends but then you’ll lay down and cry.

You will want a further explanation and feel as if you deserve one but what you need is an apology and a promising goodbye. It doesn’t have to be loud and crash like the waves of an ocean but it does have to be just as consistent and powerful of waves washing upon the shore.

Sitting in a stuffy blue room with my counselor,
she speaks quiet words
to guide me to be gentle with myself
explaining that my feelings are heavy things,
I hear my fathers voice float through the air
from the time I was a child,
speaking for me to stay softhearted
as I tried to hide my tears with my baby blanket.
I suppose I am still learning.

You say you dont love him
but there is a pang in your chest
when you say the word
don’t. Guilt reaches
to the tips of your fingers as you hold his hand
at the movies and your legs are
so heavy you walk slowly to the car after the credits finish,
its as if you are trying to savor the moment together.

You don’t love him
but you let him sing along to his favorite songs
in the car and text pretty girls.
You don’t love him yet the song lyrics
envelope you in the middle of the night and
when you see him again you can’t breath.

You don’t love him yet
you look back to that time where the two of you
were laughing so much
in the kitchen late one night to
the point where you both couldn’t stand,
I think there are burn marks on the floor where
he stood but you can’t bare to check.

You say you don’t love him but
you speak to him with too nice of words
and play his heart hoping that he would end
up falling in love
with the game you’ve been using to play with it.

You don’t love him but you
hold back the urge to kiss him.

You don’t love him because
although you are the one that
cares as much as the mountains are tall,
the care will rush away like an avalanche
when then one finally is introduced.

You don’t love him
because if you did he would end up with a broken heart

You hold upon your lips lines to poems I have been trying to finish for years.

Three evenings ago,
I blasted my music so sharply
that my melancholy heart
began beating to the rhythm of that old song
I used to play when I was trying to forget about you.

This is the second goodbye.

The first goodbye,
there were whirlpools in my heart and
tsunamis in my eyes.
My words were barbed with unexpected truths
that grazed deeply,
don’t worry your words in response required
medical assistance after as well.

The first goodbye was displaced by a deafening silence
that forced me to write so that
I would be comforted by listening to my pen slide
along the paper or my fingertips
skate along the keyboard.

The whirlpools in my heart and
tsunamis in my eyes brought you waves
three months later
but by then I no longer desired noise to help
cover up the excruciating silence for I
was finally sleeping peacefully at night.

Three months later you acted
as if I was a lighthouse and you
were a sailor longing for the shore because
the waves you felt were too strong,
as if I could and would help guide you out of this.
You sent me messages hoping I would give
the signal to bring you back,
but let me repeat myself,
you weren’t longing for me, you were longing for the shore.
You were searching for guidance
that would then bring you to safety and then
once everything was sound and safe,
you would abandon the shore and
discover the roads that people drive on and forget their way back.

Time in one way or another had shortened the distance between us.

But now this is the second goodbye.

The sun is shining, the air is warm and flowers are blooming.
This may not be rambunctious and crushing like the previous tsunamis and whirlpools but do know,
it’s as constant as the waves crashing on to the shore,
day after day after day.
The waterline being recreated wave after wave
acting as a quiet banner that reads:

“I’ve made it this far without you and
I’ll do it again and again and again.”

I hear you say her full name and know of the beautiful potential of the two of you, so I let go you go and watch you fall in love.

We once loved but drifted apart and now the only mutual thing we feel is the absence of where love used to be.

A boy goes home, takes two antacid tablets and sits on his tattered couch mumbling the words ‘she said yes’ to the empty air. I realize our hearts burn for both the right and wrong reasons and oh how did my heart burn for you.

We once loved but no longer do so now when we are sitting next to each other we don’t know what to do with our hands.

He is going to kiss other girls mouths and spill secrets into their ears during the hours you used to lay on the couch together.

I don't need to fall asleep to see you kissing other girls in my dreams because I know you're doing it in reality already. Either way it breaks my heart and that is the pain of a living nightmare.

With a tank full of gas and a yearning to
grab the keys and get lost for a little bit,
I left my quiet empty room.

The sun was shining and the
music pounded against the inside of my cars windows.
My mind was heavy and my heart was light.

I came to a road where you and I got out
and danced after staring at the stars;
It looks uglier during the day time.

I drove on the road where we blasted
John Mayer’s Slow Dancing In A Burning Room and
I still listen to the the lyrics and they still taste bitter
dripping in symbolism,
I wonder if you knew what you
were doing when you hit the play button.

I drove faster past the ice cream shop we
would go to everyday and everyday the lady behind
the counter thought we were a couple.

I drove by the playground where we pumped
our legs as we shouted out our life plans and
how different elementary teachers seem now.

I drove by the drive-in movie theater,
we said we would go and pile the car with pillows,
blankets and popcorn but never did.

I drove by the watering hole where
we spent the entire day there,
both of us hoping that we could have stayed
there a little bit longer.

I drove by your ex-girlfriends house,
I think I was part of your heart still on the lawn.

I drove by your mom’s work place and saw your car
and ended up crying.

I drove by the lake we went kayaking where we
imagined what we’ll be like in ten, twenty years.

I drove on a road with rolling hills,
I sped up and on the downhills my stomach matched
what my head was feeling when you were going in to kiss me.

I drove by the park where that time you
were telling me how you were leaving early for the summer.

I drove by our rival schools sports fields and
saw a man flying a kite and thought of you.

I drove by the town’s tiny airport and thought of
you and how you never liked being here down on the ground.

And just like that I hit a dead end.

You took me by the hand
and shut your bedroom door,
I wondered if you had read the
philosophy book on your bare
shelf and I wondered what about
space fascinated you. You took
control of the space in between us,
colliding the heavy stardust of
unspoken disclosure with anticipated
kisses and creating cosmos
of philosophical
questions of morals and values
to appear in my mind,
one right after the other
until I lifted the little dipper
lock from the door, dismissing
the idea of the possibility
of the big bang.
I wanted to stick to my
religious views.

You took me by the hand
and led me to a corner booth
at the overcrowded bar.
We talked drunk about
home, family, relationships,
and other sober promises.
Your hands wandered and I
wondered how many days
and drinks it
will take for you to
forget about me,
so I guided your hands and the
conversation to less
intimate areas.

You took me by the hand
and kissed my forehead goodbye
the first time. the second time was
a soft kiss on the lips
and the third time we
kissed like no other while the galaxies
were collapsing in my heart as
the beginning philosophical questions
made me hurting to redefine intimacy.

You took me
but we’re not holding each
others hands anymore
so I’m still trying
to learn to love
the space between us again.

Those late summer nights when we kissed
as Bohemian Rhapsody was being drunkenly sung around us,
the less connected we became;
You were enthralled about the future of
the next step you could cross while
I was too aware of the absent past we had never created.

Kissing friends with empty mouths in the heart of
june’s and july's became my home,
crowded with knick knacks of nothing.
August appeared and the familiar faces had long grown to
become lonely strangers now ready with their bags packed,  
the other months calling them to come home.

The first boy I kissed had too many plane coordinates for
me to keep up with no matter how hard I tried.

The last boy I kissed had too many kisses on his lips before mine,
holding onto too many girls hearts lazily in his back pocket and
a real home thousands of postcards away.

One day there will be a kiss that will not leave me
with an unsettled heart and new meanings to the words
temporary and genuine for there
are still still winter winds, spring hymns and
autumn hues to hold hands in.

My heart is not to meant to catch in the summer heat
only to be left to burnout once the words
‘leave’ and ‘leaves’ are too applicable in the silent fall air.

These bare kisses leave me with unspoken hellos, goodbyes
and the heartbreaking notion that summer hazes don't last forever.

The phone bill is increasing all because of
too many minutes I’ve spent falling asleep
listening to the dialing tone.

Where are you?
I’m sorry it’s so late,
it’s just that I’m still trying to
plan our future but you are
already three hours ahead of me.

You see it’s just that
your present is my future and I’m no psychic,
my present is your past and you
never really had a thing for history.

In certain parts of the world,
a word can have a specific definition,
however while used in a different location
that specific definition loses meaning
and the word is redefined.
I wonder if that was the case for us
for when the words ‘
love’ and ‘forever’ fell from our mouths
over the phone one night.

I’m sorry my dear but my heart will forever be
three hours behind yours.
But I guess I should just give it some time
because I’m sure by then
the hours will cancel out and
I will have stopped caring
just like you have already done.

Lets not lie to ourselves, a bit of forever is lost when goodbyes are exchanged.

Wild fires are not meant to be beautiful yet we still fight the urge to climb to mountains ridge to get a better view and feel the heat of the flames on our cheeks to remind us of the same feeling on our cheeks when they told us they loved us. Yet we still can’t correlate that both are equally destructive.