I’ve been thinking about
death again
my oldest friend
and it almost feels serene
to think about it’s certainty.
Sometimes, I still feel like her
all chaos and fear
heart as my mind
What if I’m not getting any better?
Trying to hold it together,
I hold on too tight
and constrict all
that keeps me upright.
Existing on borrowed time,
scribbled arrows over my veins
to try and find
a safe place on the inside
Because I can’t remember the last time
I felt safe on the outside.

The last time I was falling,
each memory
a pinprick
Talk into me and fill me
with kind observation
watch them come
and go
untied or cut free,
either way it looks the same
Overfilled
sure to burst
Hold me down or
I might float away
Would you come float
away with me?

You had a friend
who worked on the CSX railway
and he told us about how
he killed someone once.
He knew it wasn’t his fault
But still, he was awfully calm
when he talked about it.
He told us he’d blow the horn
the next time he was riding by
the crossing behind the apartment
that I let you move into.

The tracks seem to follow me and
when I feel the rumbling in a different city
I half expect to hear the short tune of a horn
followed by your lighter flick in the living room.
It keeps me on my toes
and reminds me how
I can’t seem to move into a place
without ******* train tracks nearby.

While I stand in line to pick up my prozac,
the pharmacy’s preset radio
plays a cover version of a song
that I liked in high school.  
There was a time, amazingly,
when I was naïve to the comfort of prescriptions.
Floating through friends’ houses that were
too expensive to feel comfortable in,
gravel-speckled snow in mounds
mile-marking parking lots
while waiting for the 7:00 showing.
Teenage intimacy and
red bulls at a sweet sixteen,
trying to figure out the coolest way
to ask for a sip of the schnapps
that I know is hidden in that soda can,
parties I’m not sure I was invited to
and a 10:00 PM curfew.
Water pong with balled up aluminum foil
in a half-finished shed behind
his friend’s house in the dead of winter.
I wanted to feel like them,
incite my growth,
I know he was just trying to keep me clean.
He tried, but I got what I wanted.

When I hear sirens
I wonder if they’re carrying a lost soul
or on their way to save one.
Either way, they sound like December
with brown mush lining the streets
and they keep me missing Luna
even when I say
I’m doing fine
and everything happens for a reason
and every soul lost
has a greater purpose
that couldn’t be fulfilled on this earth.
But I still think about her
and wonder if the smoke hurt
or if she looked for me
or if she was already gone
by the time the firefighters broke in.
I wanted to give her all of my love
but I think she’d be okay with me
giving myself that love instead.

tv shows on mute,
mouths moving but making no assertions.
a silence that doesn’t satisfy
slipping over the air like margarine.
loneliness in stillness
The feeling before you cry
but no tears are produced,
like a dial tone
with no intention of an outgoing call.
serenity’s evil twin,
a vibrant color muted with white.
no longer deep or dark,
just with the volume turned down,
apathetically pastel.

If I never feel happy again.
If I get a case of the “**** its”
and follow that red glow all the way to my grave
(because it feels warm once in a while).
If I walk into a venue in my hometown
and smell the familiar scent of stale beer and regret.
If my mom passes away
suddenly or succumbing to the passage of time.

That I’ll never heal from how I was treated
and continue to treat myself the same over and over.
That I have to rely on jokes about my grandmother
to keep her memory alive
when she is not.

If I let myself down
again.