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Can we start over?
Can we be strangers again?
Let me introduce myself
We can laugh and talk
And relearn what we already know
And come up with new inside jokes
And create new memories
And give each other
A second chance.
 May 2014 Agentorange
RILEY
She approached me
Tiptoeing from across the room,
Although no one was asleep around us to wake;
I watched her lower lip bleed
From biting too much,
As she deciphers the DNA codes on her hair
With her fingertips,
Stroking the life out of it
Up and down-
And up and down again.
She said don’t get me wrong
But I found myself;
I found myself lurking underneath the light of your words
Bending with your o’s and standing straight with your I’s,
Because I
Got lost;
I got lost in the stories you wrote
About the girls who broke
And they felt just like me-
Dazed
By the love poems you cried down for her,
And I wondered how beautiful she must be.
I got flustered
In the blank spaces
That you chose not to write in,
And it felt like I should cut parts of myself
And add them in the vacancies
But I just don’t know what to add.
For every time I rest my soul
On the tip of a pen
I feel like I’ve said too much,
And every time I scratch my words
Throw away my being
Behind
Unread books and dusty light stands
I believe I haven’t said enough
For I could give more,
Be more,
If only I could start over,
And you
You seem to know me more than I know myself;
You have built bridges
Out of my paper shreds,
Tunnels out of my unexpressed thoughts-
You have created your haven inside my brains
And settled down in my heart.
You’ve managed to make me chew your words
Like breakfast
Was a poetic meal to be served
At all times of the day;
You’re an image,
I re-create you in my mind
Before I sleep
After asleep
And even during I sleep-
The thoughts of you never quit my head
Like a gamer would never quit
A game of Warcraft
In the midst of hunting season”
She took off her glasses,
And I could see the marks of them
Being there for too long.
She closes her eyes
As if she was about to take a leap of faith,
But instead she leaped two steps into my arms
And that was when
I got to ask her
What her name was.
And that was when I realized
It didn’t even matter.
 May 2014 Agentorange
Lauren
If I could I would plant sunflower seeds
on every inch of my body
so I know that
one day
I would become
beautiful
It is 4:30 in the afternoon
And I tell you
This is my favorite time of day.
You ask why
So I point to the gold
Streaming in the window,
Bouncing off the dust.
And you kiss me.
Maybe 4:31 in the afternoon
Is my favorite time of day.
 May 2014 Agentorange
A Mareship
There is a deep, rich silence and the bedsheets are as soft as oil.
“What do you think happens when you die?” I ask. “From a purely scientific perspective. Is there any way…?”
Dee rolls his shoulders onto my hands.
“No, Art. I told you. There’s just nothing.”
“But I can’t imagine ‘nothing’.”
“Of course you can. Before you were born – what was there?”
“There was the promise of me.”
“No. There was the risk of you.”
We both laugh.
“There must be something.” I say. “There must be.”
“I hope there’s nothing.” Dee says. “ I can’t think of anything worse than an afterlife. I want peace and quiet. A lifetime is enough. Being alive is such a strange predicament. Knowing everything and knowing nothing.”
I can feel his heart against me. I can feel his heart and smell his skin. I feel us, as we are rocked by the world and breathing together.
And outside is the garden, the wisteria, the white chair, the promise (and the risk) of something, anything, everything, nothing.
 May 2014 Agentorange
L S Tesler
i will never forget you

until someone new comes around
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