It doesn't happen very often any more
But at times
The darkness calls
And I, feeling pulled
Betray my better self in favor of
A temporary respite from the loneliness.  
And though the path I'm on isn't perfectly straight, it's perfectly imperfect in all its human messiness

And it's beautiful, for all of our madness comes
from within, as so does our exquisiteness.

If darkness calls on you, and you find yourself
Unable to resist, I will love you just the same
in the morning, as we are more brothers, lovers, sisters than we are distant cousins.  

And you are not the darkness
You are not the pain
You're the seer and the seen
And it's not always easy
to refuse the mad hatter's offer for tea

I tried to call out to you
in my dream last night.
But you were lost
behind a fixation
I couldn't re-imagine.

Now I'm looking
at the way I'm coping
hoping to somehow
ghostwrite my way out
of this incessant grief.

We can't just spill loss
into a letter and hope
by some chance
they read it over our shoulder.

I am foreshadowing
someone else's demise.

I've spent a lot of time losing this year,  
and somehow this was the most difficult.

Somehow the idea
is worse than
the reality

Somehow these words
will not be enough for you.

Asking you to stay
sounds selfish,
but you leaving seems the same.

I can't tell if
this is a poem
for my best friend that died-
or to the one who tried to.

I guess it's both.
I guess I am both.

Somewhere between grieving
too late and too early
in the same breath.

Loss feels so much more
than empty,
I am a tea kettle
  with bad metaphors
left on too long
so I am just screaming.

This is an empty house-
no one can hear me.

My blood boils over
with emotions
never taken off the back burner.

This chest caves in
and I cave into
the mindset that
this scenario
isn't imagination.

This is real life
and death isn't
just a concept for me anymore.

It is object permanence.

I wait for you beneath the stars, in the place that we agreed upon
In a dream I can’t remember, though I’m sure we both were there
And though others ask if anyone is sitting in the empty seat beside me
I tell them that it’s spoken for and see them on their way

I wait for you beneath the stars, in the place near where the wind begins
With fresh cut grass and dandelions and sand down to the shore
And when it’s clear I see your face among the constellations
And when it’s not I see your heart float among the clouds

I wait for you beneath the stars, in the place that we agreed upon
The fire burning just enough to warm two cups of tea
And when you arrive I’ll know you by the words you spoke
when you told me……….well, you already know