two smiles that grow
a love that shows
and an ember in the heart of the woods

I am not the one for you,
Nor you the one for me.
We are not each other's halves,
No puzzle piece or key.

I am not your mother's love,
Nor you my perfect mold.
My heart is not your tambourine
To play as we grow old.

We are not the perfect match,
The blue of oceans deep.
When will I confess to you
The love I cannot keep?

Thanks for having me
It was great to see you
Sorry again
That I ruined the cous-cous

If we could be like squirrels on a wire
who exchange brief pleasantries and then
leap from their graces without dwelling much on where the other has gone or why they have left

If there were no should-we or would-we's
churning in our heads
thick and messy like butter

If I could inhale you over and over
your sweat sweet like music
If I wouldn’t miss it a day

If I left and it was not cruel
If it did not break you
If a few good years of trouble
came and went but interrupted nothing
like flickers of a lamp in a sunny room

If then I could return to you
If all the people and places and things
that we did and went and broke
could be swept up into tidy little boxes
and stay hidden from ourselves forever

They would
I would
If we could.

There is the payphone I’ll use in middle school
The one I’ll use to call mom crying
After you drop me off and say
Goodbye Forever
And the one into which you’ll crash the car
The car we’ll drive you home in
After your first time at the hospital
Where you’ll go twice a week
Every week
For six months
To be s h o c k e d
And the one you’ll bring me to
Where I’ll tell your psychiatrist of the monster you become
When your shadow swallows the house
But leaves you the roof
For you to climb up onto
And balance on the shingles
As Mom fights back her tears
And calmly tells the police
That it's only a BB gun.

Burn it.

The charm of Endearingly Different
The Elegance of Eloquence
The Stage upon which I perform for the
You I do not know.

The airless chambers in which we pretend to breathe
Burn them.
Burn your favorite things to hide behind
My perfect little oddities

More and more these days
The nights seem quieter
The days shorter
And in the sterile hours of sleep
I pray for ashen rain.

With each of your naked musings
on Our Generation
Or words spoken too frankly
of Our Unfortunate Timing
Just for a moment I hear ‘Our’
and think of the home, the kids, and the debt
that I'll one day call ‘Ours’ with a strong, loving man
And you, with a smart, gentle thing.

I kind of hope it does,* he said,
forking at a piece of chocolate cake
too large for the plate he chose.
We didn't say much in the flat moments after.
It thickened the air as we turned
back to the TV and watched
the pretty people wryly wonder
if the world would really end.

you guys.