I love to move like a virus
inside her body,
balancing the wish to be killed
with the need to be spread.

Sometimes I ignore everything going on in my life because its easier
and then when I'm alone and I try and use cigarettes and TV to distract me
It doesn't work
the world gets so small I can't breath
and I curl up and cry and cry
or sometimes I get up and pace and pace and pace
and every breath I take hurts
and the knots in my stomach and throat are killing me
I have no idea what to do
I have no one to turn to
and I realize how much I have isolated myself
I can't get off my desert island
I thought I wanted solidarity
but I really wanted was safety and security
and being alone is the opposite
it just created a fearful lonely existence

I hate you.

                                                         I hate you.



                 I hate you.

Everything is barren now.
The leaves have fallen and the bugs have all
Retreated into the warm houses.
I saw one in my shower this morning
And as I turned on the faucet, it flew
To the next wall. I worried that
The water bouncing off my body
Might drown it or make its wings too wet to survive the winter
But I did nothing to move it.

I understand that the only reason
You don’t like riding home from school with me anymore
Is because you can’t smoke cigarettes in my car.
But now I have to drive by the twin oaks alone—
Those twin oaks where I sat with a girl I was sure
I would soon come to love.
Staring up at the leaves with her, I’d thought maybe
That girl and I were just like the oaks:
Two separate bodies joined at one point.

Now the way snow hangs makes it clear.
Those canopies could only spread and grow
Once the oaks had parted, leaning in opposite directions.
You used to distract me as we drove by,
Keeping my mind from the haunting reminder
Of the future that failed to pass.
Without you with me there, I’m left to question
What I’ll see when this pristine white landscape
Finally melts.

That bug on the sterile white porcelain
Seemed to scream this morning as I idly hummed a tune
Written by some friends who moved to Athens.
It screamed with the smog of unsmoked cigarettes
And leaves that can never be unfallen.  
My humming
Was screaming too.

The four of us wrote each other fortune cookies
And the sad part was that even though
The cookies we baked together were sugary and warm
None of the little squares of paper inside
Made much indication of one another.

You remarked that it had been exactly a year since
You were where we were:
Lying in a snowy field and watching the grey clouds rush
From the horizon to the moon
Illuminated by city lights too.

You protested those lights, throwing doorknobs
For the darkness but you couldn't break that streetlamp
Until the sun had already risen and the LSD
Had already worn off
Such that there was nothing to do
But read our fortunes quietly and sadly reminisce
About that night we'd spent
Melting the snow beneath our bodies.

stop romanticizing death.
the sick image of me
laying on my grave
as you sit beside
shaking with unspoken words
of lost love.

old and new times come together
pretending that we are so easy
to recreate.

10 minutes away
tomorrow I am leaving
so why at my feet now,
all the emotions
that I don't want to step into
cover me in mud.

smoke blinds the past
time after time.

when is this night gonna end.