There is a table with five chairs.
It’s always stood in the center of the room.

Connections made by meals,
A place where a wood maker envisioned happy gatherings and Sunday brunches.

So he carved 5 thoughtful chairs,
Each with a different occupant who sits in their own chair every time.
I bet the wood maker imagined orange juice being poured upon that table, and people tapping their fingernails against the side of their wooden seat.

His envisions came to life, for there was once a time where a mass of a family gathered there each night,
With a dog licking up scraps.

The tragedy is that his dream has died now.
The lit conversations have blown out,
Just like the candles that still remain set there each night in desperation to restore the old times with remembrance.

Don’t worry wood maker,
Your 5 chairs and table still indeed remain,
But only three remain occupied.
Your chairs didn’t do well enough for the others not to desire a new table.

It was when the anklet started fraying,
When I knew you’d never come back.
Maybe you’re body will return,
But you are lost,
And I am broken.
We weren’t always.
You were a psychology major,
And I worked at a deli.
We filled our daily mochas
With ignorance,
But of course,
It was topped with whipped bliss that was creamy and sweet and rolled down my throat like lava drooping down its volcanic fortress.
I rather be sick of you
Than missing you.
I can’t forget the turnover I felt
When the illuminating dancing flower maids in the streets of Boston turned gray.
You’re news stomped out,
They slapped me hard,
They grabbed you by your luscious mane
And dragged you away.
I know as time gets older it grows people out of shells,
Forcing their old skin to remain behind,
For it no longer has a purpose,
But I never thought your fresh soul
Would shed off your anklet too.

Tell me you don’t love me.
                     and the fingers I run through your hair are nimble caterpillars
that are strong enough to fly away now.

Kiss me so I know it’s not real;
    that each lascivious touch is a misconception of realms where I may actually have stability…
   and that you’ll make me breakfast in bed by glowing breaks of auburn rays tomorrow.

Tell me you used me.
To make the no one you never had jealous,
and she’ll want you back by morning.

               But reassure me that until then,
we’ll embrace in parked cars,
as roads around us disguise themselves with a mask of slick ice.

  and each groping breath for each other fogs up glass on a 2006 Mustang.

Let me wake to the mourning dove coo,
and empty beds.
Let my hands bleed with fingerprints of the reminiscent touches of you,
         and hand me no cleansing rag.

If I left,
It wouldn't be for closure, or other happiness.
I need to seek if I am emotionally ill,
and if there is a perscription that could cease it.
Because I won't let you go.

Poets have to be melancholics?
Well ****.
The Earth does not contain a soul lacking bleak thoughts.
Thoughts that we pertain that drive us crazy and carry out the drive spitting those thoughts into words.
however,
they're killing us.
They swallow us whole and we feel trapped in the belly of it with slimy walls of hatred.
Once there, it is easiest to sit in the stomach and let it digest us and dissolve us apart.
But what if one day we just turned our minds to realize that the stomach is connected to the tunnel up the mouth providing a beacon of light.
After that odyssey one should write about the courage and faith it took to escape the dark, gloomy stomach.
As if praying,
I was taught by a reverend long ago to pray in the dark times,
and to pray in the light times.
So whether it's dark or light or maybe just gray,
write about it.

You can drink and drink and be high on life, feeling numb to the world around you,
But then strikes the realization that your glass is empty and you’ve let all your emotions flood out at once,
And you are empty, you are drained.
You can cry and cry, but it reaches a point when your tears are no longer nourished, so artificial moisture seeps out of you and dissolves at the mere sight of the sun.

"But that was the center of my summer... everything is slowly falling apart"
"You still have me "
"I swear I'll **** myself if things don't work out"
"Don't joke like that"
"Why? Haven't you ever thought of suicide?"
"I guess once last year...Have you?"
"No"
I hate lying.

Shadow snaking in and out within the wet, black cement
Brain cells collide
In more than a rush to escape the provoking situation.
Spinning.
Spiraling.
Faster.
And faster.
The external view was cursed with two windows that the home residents never dared to look out upon.
The heart mistakenly pounced as the leaky French pipes dripped into the puddle formation.
Spinning.
Spiraling.
Fast.
And faster.
The windows liked it.
So they did the same.

Have you ever been with someone you know you won’t work with but you’re with them anyway because…
I don’t know…
you’re already heartbroken…
what could you have to loose?

It was how I felt driving with my eyes closed.
It was when I started listening.
It was when the setting southern sun hit through your eyes illuminating the fall lights that look at me
and I'll look back too.
It turned when I held the new born goat
and you held it too.
It was the day when I realized what I had to lose.
I'll tell you all my hopes and dreams,
and you'll tell them too.
For 5 months and 16 days I had been collecting stick and branches
And crumpling my precious old papers and arranging them into a ideal fire pit,
Preparing myself to set the flames that warmed me just the right way.
Never really thought I'd light the fire before I let a mellow breeze take it over.
Until I realized,
It's getting colder.
And people are bringing out their candles and lighters.
Yet I have a perfect bonfire ready to light.
Yes it is true it could eventually die out.
But I'd die without it.
So I just set a match in my pit.
And I've never been cold since.

i try to fall asleep as fast as i can.
if i don't,
my mind will linger.
and i will think of you.
and my heart will hurt.
so i close my eyes where i can skip to the part about living in realms and flying free.
that's why i fall asleep as fast as i can.
so you can't follow me.

It must've been a metaphor.
This one person bench,
calling my name,
mocking me.
I'm useless without her.
I'm an intricate doorframe;
beautifully handcrafted,
and carved of rosewood.
But as a door myself,
I'm missing a ****,
I have seeping holes,
and my past left behind
brutally rugged scratches and beats.

I gave up on attending church,
giving myself leeway to roll left, stretch right,
swaddled in the devoted and over emotional covers - of  the white.
I greeted the sun
when it deserved it
and I was ready for it’s rays of fuzzy gold.
I felt alive and welcomed,
being encompassed in it’s rays that clung to me.
And I clung back,
feeling healed by the power that can also destroy.
I was in love with it.
It kissed me.
The kiss of life and death.
Like you do,
soft, slow,
once.
Once.
I want it. I crave it.
I had already found myself longing for your lips
even before the indents on my skin from the heavy bracelets I wore all night could vanish from recirculation.

My leg’s - hands crept from thermo tile to thermo tile,
avoiding cracks- for the life of me.
Those tiles,
slick, hard, unforgiving, and rugged
that’s how I felt-
when I left your driveway that I knew I was supposed to stop and jump out of
and run back to your arms in.
But I didn’t.
Why didn’t I?
The air I’m now breathing alone was toxic,
I’m choking.

But why?
Why can’t we inhale
and build an immunity?
Like real people do.
Loving you is like
loving the sun that’s killing me but always there,
providing warmth I lust after and get burned from as my skin shrieks,
bringing vibrance to my life of white.
Every kiss is damaging and lethal over time
yet the radiation is addictive.

Hold on.
Please.
Don’t let the lambent flames we were adjacent to while studying supernovas-
stampede the stability you felt
when white sheet days turned purple,
and cantaloupe squares reflected orange from the moon,
that was still being reflected from the sun,
that’s always there.
Always.
Don’t take lightly the rest you had
against me on a long ride home-
and I touched your face.
and you knew.
I knew you knew.
I saw your shoulders tense with joy under a tie dye spread of blue and yellow,
and your toes scrunched.
I saw that.

Don’t forget Sundays.
Don’t forget white sheets.

The dream that kept me busy every night since the days of coloring for homework assignments,
is no longer fiction.

The fantasy that was so perfectly unreal
is alive and living in my heart,
but while it lives,
it tears down my mind as if I am constantly going off the trail I had kept clean for years.
Why is perfection tearing me apart.
That doesn't seem like perfection.
But it is perfection.
What is perfection.

The path I've made myself for room to grow is suddenly crowded with beautiful, terrifying, peoples that are always present, lingering...They're ghosts of you that haunt and mock me.

I am gifted to have what I do, yet without a little loss how am I supposed to feel desire, and lust?

Maybe I'm just broken...