...and it's after having looked into your eyes that I can say I've drowned in the ocean without stepping foot into water

When I was 15 I told my mom I couldn't go to school because my heart hurt.
She brought me to the doctor.
I couldn't find the courage to tell him the pain lives in the place where you used to be.
I had no courage to diagnose it as chronic.

I've always thought that I would be the one to write my own eulogy and keep it hidden in the back of my drawer so that when you see my name in the obituaries you won't need to worry about having to pretend you care. I'll write my eulogy for you. I'll talk about all the things you wished you could of told me before you ran off without warning, I'll write about how my love was a state of mind and all you wanted to do was blow your head off. I'll write about how you never really knew how to love me because all your life you were taught about the birds and the bees and never learnt about the significance of butterflies till everything you loved finally became everything you lost. I'll write my eulogy for you, I'll write about how the walls you built to shut me out we're decorated with us in picture frames, and no alcohol could consume you enough and give you a motive to take them down. I'll write about how maybe you thought the timing was wrong, the place was wrong, the motives were wrong but how you have never experienced a love so right. And maybe I wasn't always your cup of tea but I can bet anything that after the tenth shot of ***** your body was numb and your skin craved my fingers enough that you settled for the girl in your bed who's name, to this day you still don't know. I'll write my eulogy for you, I'll write about how for the past eight years you watched the sunset and talked to me from a different rooftop. And that even when it set it took you a while to get up and go to bed because you missed the feeling of watching me waiting in your sheets. I'll write my eulogy for you. I'll write about how you're sorry. Because the only thing different about you and a setting sun, is that the sun always came back.

I have been looking for poetry. I have been emptying drawers in search for metaphors to describe words too beautiful to roll off my tongue. I have been chocking on ways to explain this feeling in my chest and no
simile or imagery will settle because the result is always less than what I need to say. I searched under my bed this morning, I'm looking for a poem that would have convinced you to stay; a poem composed of concrete that would of kept your shoes planted here so that when the night broke to day I wouldn't of had to wake up alone. Alone in this house where picture frames of our love are hung on the wall and the carpet is stained with purple spots from that one time you made me laugh so hard and spill my wine all over it. Let me assure you I never tried to get the stains out, they were just as precious as a letter that I wrote you that never got mailed out because we shared the same mail box. And as long as I knew your address as though it was my own that's when I'd be sure that wherever I am; I'm home. I have been looking for poetry. I wrote you a letter and I placed it in our mailbox because I know you love when people write to you. I know you love the look of my handwriting when it's a message written to your name. I wrote you a letter telling you that I've never enjoyed a sunrise more than when the rays kiss our hardwood floor while we're dancing in the kitchen. I've never enjoyed a sunset more than when we're laying on the grass near that one tree and the crickets sound like they're urging us to kiss. I have been looking for poetry, and there's not one place in going to miss; I'm looking everywhere. I checked under the bathroom sink this morning where we stored those candles that burned the one night we got a bit too close, shut the windows and found ourself laying in bed running fingers along the inches of each other skin like blind men reading braille. I found poetry in the small of your back. The words wrapped themselves around your spine and made their way up to your carved shoulders. I don't think I had ever read anything more beautiful. It was as though our bedroom was a place of worship; and it's always Sunday morning. I don't want to bow my head because I'm too busy reading the prayer written in your eyes.
I'm looking for poetry. I'm not gonna stop looking for it because none of them are satisfying. I'm trying to find the poem the door mat and the porch steps wrote on the day you left. The day they wrote about the silence of your breath. And the delicacy of your steps as you ran away. The one about the cracked door you left open and the breeze that made its way upstairs and whispered the goodbye you couldn't find the courage to say.
I keep writing you letters. But they always find themselves in the mailbox by the end of the week. And I wish I'd find it in myself to accept the fact that our address is different now. Everything is different now. They say insanity is doing the same thing again and again, expecting a different result. Well I must be insane because I keep looking for the poem that tells me you leaving wasn't my fault. I'm waking up shaking in our place of worship and I'm hoping that maybe, just maybe it's God gripping me by the shoulders screaming "You are loved, you are loved, you are loved!"

I'm in love with a girl who washes her hair in her bathroom sink every morning.
Truth be told,
She washes it in the kitchen,
But I wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong idea.
Let's backtrack for a minute.
You see she has a shower right behind her
But she hasn't used it since the day the water ran red.
She tells me she likes the way dirt looks under her fingernails,
The way people on the street wonder if she's lazy
Or just excavated a body.
But what's the difference right?
Either way you find yourself in a hole.
I wait for her in the kitchen every morning.
Hand her her coffee.
Watch her stare into the yard as she sips.
I mention the birds
and she sighs something about the night she had to chase away the neighbors cat.
How she wishes her father would stop feeding them.
But you see,
I've heard this story a hundred times.
And though the ending's always different,
Nothing really changes.
Her dad keeps feeding the birds,
And her uncle keeps dying.
Sometimes it's an accident,
sometimes it's a disease.
Either way he ends up in a hole
And her dad only comes home when the birds get hungry.
I picture her sitting cross legged on her grass,
Her eyes envying the way it always shines green,
And I get lost in thoughts of how I'd like to make her my emerald.
But you see she's always wanted to be a diamond,
And there's just not enough warmth in my soul,
Or pressure in my hips
To give her that.
You see she washes her hair in the kitchen sink everyday
Because her best friend killed himself when she was eleven
And let the blood run down the drain.
She dyes her hair the color of a crime scene,
But forgets the caution tape.
She says she hates the mirror in her bathroom and the way the lighting makes her look,
But I've never once seen her bother to open the window.
You see I never minded though
Because the longer she stayed in the dark,
The longer I got to pretend to be her sunshine.

I was driving down an old road this morning, one hand clenched to the handle of a porcelain coffee cup, one hand clenched to the wheel; digging my nails into the rubber. I've always hated driving, it was always a better place to be sitting in the passenger seat, your hand enfolded in mine. Im rolling through stop signs hoping maybe a car will hit their brakes a moment too late. Each road line painted a bright yellow, the kind that reminded me of a sun we used to watch rise off the balcony of our house. I didn't want to think about it too much, it would of brought me back to a better time and place than now but they always told me to keep my eyes on the road. It was easy to do until I passed by this field of yellow daisies, the kind that were printed on the spring sheets we'd wrap ourselves in on the mornings that rain kissed the roof. The kind that decorated the church on the day that I made a promise on forever. A forever that should of lasted longer than sickness can control.
The golden sun grazed it's rays over the old barn where we once sat in hay bails and counted constellations. The rays were blinding, but so was the memory that lit up with them. The yellow dress your mother wore on the day we lay you down 6 feet too deep. The day a rock became your welcome mat. The day I couldn't find the right way to say goodbye.
I was driving this morning. I'm laying in a hospital bed now. I'm sorry that the yellow lights of that truck drew me in. Somehow I saw you smiling at me through them. As I lay on the pavement in pools of red, the yellow lines of the road by my side, heartbeat coming down till all I can hear is the softness of your voice; I finally felt like maybe this is the only way home.

It hasn't rained this hard in months, the window is tasting the wrath of the sky and I am laying, clothed in empty. Have you ever felt the weight of lids against your eyes? It's almost like the closing of the curtain after a play that should have never ended. I guess that's how I feel tonight. It's the first time that the tremble of lightning shakes the house and I don't miss you. It's the first time that the thoughts inside my head are being drown out by rain. Maybe this is why there are storms, maybe everyone is a little empty. I've always loved the roaring of thunder; I never loved you.