Next to your pyre
Nest to your flame
I am ashamed by my mortality

these days have made ash accumulating of me
the grown-up ghost I'm taken to be
a soundless sonder

Through another man's lens
through another boy's poem
you are still beautiful to me

Some other man's Eurydice
Some boy who didn't turn around
when faced with the world only a few steps away

Now I am buried under this city
practicing sleepless nights
I talk to you backwards and pray for the world to begin again

a double exposure in third person
the picture makes sense, the pieces don't fit together
My schizophrenia in monochrome

Limerance,
though spurious
pending supplication

Some nights I leave the door unlocked, though there is no proof, they are still after me. You are the last place I look for lost things. If I could stop thinking about you I would tell my psychiatrist but I wouldn't tell my priest. There is a lifetimes worth of new years promises pending upon your lips, nothing gets me through most nights like practicing in front of a mirror. I believe the fire inside of you will burn me, but I know no other way to get close to you.

Some nights I dream of you backwards and leave the doors unlocked, if you walked out on me, then I would know one of us wasn't telling the truth.

Lighthouses on purpose, fire escapes on mute. I am the patron Saint of second chances, I count the heartbeats away from you. I believe in nothing else. There is a rock in my breast pocket, I don't know how it got there, but it reminds me of you.

I picked up a collection of your poetry
and it didn't take all night to read
You talk to yourself a lot.
I am now empty more so for knowing
how empty you tell yourself you are.

there is a fifteen minute cab ride
or a 45 minute bus ride
that makes the most distance of this city
but I would walk to you at any hour.
Regardless of any change
I may carry in my pockets,
there will always be an open hand
for you if you would take it

Somewhere my mother shares her bed with nobody
after being twice robbed of her covers
by the same man
she has never returned to that softness.

somewhere else my father sleeps with himself
and cries for having held on for so long

There is a grace we don't allow ourselves for letting go.
you need not be in love to hurt,
you need not forgive to be alone.

I think you are everything I reach for,
though for fear my throat is empty of your echoes
I read your poetry
and some nights I ride the bus home
in the other direction.

How do you live here? / who's sins have you / do you forgive yourself / for the sake of what you believe / makes you? / keeps you in momentum / sails unfurled against the clock / How do you live here? / which scars do you show / which ones no one knows? / what parts of your skin were you born in / what parts of your skin are new / drawn over / coloured outside the lines? / what parts of your skin have you always been? / How do you live here? / who's laugh track echoes in your ear / a recording of a long since dead live t.v. show audience / or your now since becoming nameless childhood friends? / How do you live here? / how do you occupy your skin / your sins / your echoes? / what dreams keep you asleep / what dreams keep you awake / what dreams keep you? / How do you live here?