it still hurts in a way that's hard for you to explain to those who have never had to live every day knowing there are still pieces of your heart stuck inside someone else's chest. so what. so you still wear his old t-shirts to bed even though you know you should have thrown them out months ago, there are texts and photos on your phone that you can't bring yourself to erase no matter how many tears streak your face or how many times your heart breaks all over again. every single day you think of calling him, but only certain days are bad enough for you to actually contemplate it: days that used to be important and hold value - his birthday, your birthday, your anniversary, holidays - but then the obvious days turn into days where it hurts so deep that you look for reasons to call; it's raining and you want to say hey, remember that time we were in Sandusky and it thunderstormed so hard our whole hotel shook and lightening illuminated Lake Erie? remember how I was so scared, and you held me all night long? or when it's midnight and you throw on his old clothes even though they stopped smelling like his cologne an eternity ago, their cotton hasn't touched his skin in months but you wear them anyway because you resonate with that feeling, and you think of calling just to say that you wish you could feel him one last time. you do. you wish you could drive to his house again, you still know the way so well you could do it with your eyes closed, sneak up to his bedroom and crawl into bed with him even though you both complained it was too small for two people, you wish you could zip your fingers together like an old jacket, familiar and warm, you wish you could bury your face into his chest and smell his skin again, feel his lips kiss the top of your head as if this constituted saying I love you, I missed you out loud. the truth is you're more than well aware any combination of these things are very unlikely to ever occur, but that doesn't stop you from wishing, from picking up stray pennies or blowing out everyone else's birthday candles. do you remember the first time you saw a shooting star. how you were with him and how it felt a little like fate. you want to call him and tell him that you've never been so broken. that you believe you can go backward, because you don't see a forward that you like. but you can't. so instead you keep his name buried underneath your tongue. you don't cry when you miss him because no one understands it anymore; too much time has passed. get over it already. you keep his sweaters warm inside your dresser drawers and you wash the sheets weekly because they smell like someone else now. the bed never stops feeling empty. there are eight stop lights between your house and his, and this distance has never looked more red.

A radio perches on a mahogany end-table,
singing like a mechanical bird:
bellowing fuzzy jazz, reaching my ear.

Its sides are rounded
like the curves of a classic car.
The antenna is *****
like the arm of an eager child
I've had swinging in-between
phantom-bytes and sonic slush:
my mind: inexcusable and mush.

A deck of cards shrugs it's shoulders
before it climbs on top of the radio;
it's rigid joints straightening and angling.
It tucks the tab back into it's head,
concluding before singing along to
'Somewhere beyond the sea.'

The voice of the deck rattled and squeaked,
like a caged mouse doing a capella.
Shot spit of it's mouth,
like a translucent spaghetti noodle. Bloop.

- I stormed outside, inaudible to all,
unmoved by few, chosen by none -

Today I sat across from a girl --
across the room, not across a table
or across the universe --
Her hair dangled like a carrot's wig,
a carrot's impersonation of a blonde girl.

Of course, her skin was closer to orange than pale --
but I like that stuff. I want it rubbed off on me,
physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally.
Old-oxidized-green-coins invaded her eyes
and settled in the center of eggshell-white buffer.

Pants were as denim as a brush of shale
or the picture-pose of a flannel-clad beard,
holding a pick-ax and a dusty journal.
A journal of my thoughts, timeless
in their irrelevancy, until discovered
and claimed by someone else,
someone with a beard, a daughter, a smile;
See: Things I will never have.

What could I mean to this person?
How could I be desirable to her?
What am I but an alien,
coasting a galactic sea,
unable to relate to what I see?

- And what was your prize,
in this life? To be loved?
Or to be conquered? -

The deck of cards disappeared.
And I, I without consequence,
rummage through dust blanketed boxes,
hoping to cut my hand on something
I have mistaken as dull.

I have been told that my mother inhabits this box,
somewhere, sometime, somewhere, sometime.
A framed image, a polka dot cloth, a forever
unprecedented by a sunny-day funeral,
where I am the tail of the dying snake
that is my family: last to perish, last to wait:
a corrosive ingestion of unadulterated isolation.

My beige fingers wrap meat and bone,
but also a cheap-golden frame of my mother and us.
Our glasses are all too big, but we were all too poor.
My mother is wearing her wedding ring,
but I don't know why.

So young and vulnerable,
held by a freckled, strawberry blonde.
I don't even know her, any more.

The deck of cards reappears.

- But I've been alone for too long.
Even the winds have stopped whispering.
I have become a witness to my own death. -