it was
a light so bright
that i missed everything

the flames were too high
the emotions were too strong
the world was ripped asunder
in the blink of an eye

awake
and holding on
to fragments of you

the words were too sharp
the paths we blazed too far apart
the reckoning now absolute
i live with the ghost of you

Two years on, the bank bought the house
Your mother tried but couldn't make the payments
I tried as I could but couldn't keep it going
So many memories just left to fade

No trace of life, no trace of a body
You just went clear off the edge of the earth
Didn't bring a map, didn't plan to come back
Did you suffer, Gillian?

There'll always be part of me that remembers
But I know that there's always something missing
I'll try to move forward from this loss
But how could I make sense of it all?

I've been holding it all together for too long now
So much so I've forgotten myself
Been trying to be stronger than I used to be
Rebuilding to learn to love someone else

Where does love go?
Where does it bleed out?
What can be done to stem the flow
What can quell the hurt, what can ebb the tide?

Where does love go?
Where does love lost get found again
When does it stop hurting so much?
Oh, does it ever really stop?

Can I try to make connections new
With the ghost of you
Still lingering 'round all I know?
Can I try to keep my heart aligned
And try to pretend I'm alright
With you still missing from my life?

the right person
at the wrong time
to cause a chain reaction

synapse flare
breathing change
hands hiding
grow closer

endless joyful days
with everything in the way
everything
on the line

the right person
at the wrong time
agony on the horizon

a fire left untended
a forest with unquenchable thirst
a single spark

the wrong thing to say
the last words we spoke

i don't want to lose you as a friend
a fire dies
cannot undo

the right person
at the wrong time
indelible memories

even if i'd
met you a decade before
i was always
ten steps behind

has it really been thirteen years
since we dreamed of the city surrounded by cornfields

19 was a different lens
hot august evenings staring at the stars
on the rockslide in the quarry by your father's house
where we drifted deeper into love and ardor

in the heat of an endless summer,
the unflinching drift towards new romance and dreams of
marriages and sacred vows and well,
where did it all lead us, and where are we now?

in interceding years came new flames and hurricanes
and always those roads turned back towards you, didn't they
i sat for you for your paintings and i fell more and more
in love with someone whose heart could never let me stay

now, what have we come to, and what have we learned?

32 a new lens with clearer eyes and
i surmise now that i knew not where that road would go
i kept the promise that i'd made, just in a different way
past the barns and the long highways i'd dreamed of with you

glacial, time continues on
and memories are fleeting but fond

has it really been thirteen years
since i knew the joy of you

i bleed
in shades of green
and yellow and orange too

i hemorrhage
from chameleon wounds

i see you in
brand new color
i burn

you feign innocence
when the blood is on your hands

beat myself up til i break something
and try to replace what i’ve broken
with pieces of someone else.
torpedo what works til it sinks
and try to salvage a heart from the
wreckage of what once was.

beat myself up til something bleeds
patch up the wounds with masking tape
and hope that the dams don’t burst free.
crash the party you threw til someone
calls the cops and it’s all broken up
and i’m swinging from the chandelier

yelling ‘someone make sense of this!’

flames in the treetops
autumn has overstayed
and in the rain swept away,
insurmountable.

the leaves on the streets
slippery still,
and my heartbeat still
and i can't leave you here like this

yet insurmountable
the distance completes the arc
we cannot seem to make the ends meet

green, yellow, in bloom again
spring has returned
and in its warming light
we've been carried home

and with a crash of thunder
summer came pouring in
and i lose you to the floods and the wind

and insurmountable
the seasons constant shift
and i'm left high and dry
to uncoil and twist

black, red, bruised and broken
bury me in the early autumn's leaves
oh, nashua
the morning fog
insurmountable

for all the words we should've said
for all the apologies i never heard
why do we leave it this way
why do we end things at hate,
i don't know

orange, red, turn your clock back again
oh autumn has overstayed her hesitant welcome

and if the sun goes a little sooner each day
and your heart just wants to pour down rain
i say let it rain