The nights seem to stretch for miles.
Every one of them spent searching.
All I've found is things can change in a day.
Lives can change in a week.
I used to sleep soundly next to you.
Now I sleep solely next to strangers.
I'm wasting all my energy on things I can't pin down.
Swinging at anything that moves or smiles.
Self deprecation is my native tongue.
I keep trying to figure out how you ever loved me.
Or if I saw me from the outside would I even love myself.
I used to think people were like puzzle pieces.
Fitting together neatly, beautifully.
Maybe it's still true.
Maybe we still fit.
Or maybe things change.
Maybe the edges slowly wear away.
Until one day they just don't fit.
On that day you, the you I know, dies.
The me I was, isn't any more.
We die and fit some where else.
Some one else.
It's sad and strange and it happens all the time.
But when it happens to you it feels like the only time.
Maybe people only live in memories.
They live in the lines between your life.
In the smiles and the tears.
They live in the fog of your mind.
The worst of them are like fires.
They sear and burn if they're touched.
But it's a sting you just keep coming back to.
Because the memory is all you have left.
Maybe we live in a world of ghosts.
Of the dead forgotten lovers.
Of the heartbroken and forlorn.
Of the memories some where in some ones head.
Ghosts of every person we ever were.
Halves of halves of what used to be whole.
All waiting and searching the night.
All hoping for the person who puts out every  other fire
But lights one that will last an eternity.

A great man once said that we are all born from star dust.
I think that's true.
It would explain why every inch of you glows like the sun.
Another great man theorized the universe started with a bang.
I think, actually I know, this too must be true.
Because you started one in my head from the moment we met.
And since then it's been you and only ever you.
Like an astronomer I've found a star among millions
That somehow makes all the other stars immeasurably duller.
And every inch, every crack, every imperfection, every scar
Is utterly and undeniably beautiful.
Like the smile that seems to come from your very soul.
Or the lilt in your voice that sings in my ears and into my veins.
Or the way you curl your hair around your finger when your nervous.
Or the way you laugh at all your own jokes.
Or the way you will always take time even if there is none.
Or even how in 5th grade you bullied a girl once
and since then you've never forgiven yourself for it.
Or the way you always know just the right thing to say.
Or...how you think you're just another person.
You walked straight from a dream and into my life.
Because sometimes life is fair and kind.
Sometimes you meet people that feel larger than whole galaxies.
Sometimes you meet the type of person that will change whole worlds.
Sometimes you meet stars.

It's 3 A.M. here and the world's asleep.
I've had enough drinks to numb me.
Somewhere you're softly sleeping.
I talk to God and the Devil
but I think only one is whispering back.
Everything is happening.
Nothing is happening.
They some how seem the same.
There's strangers in  the mirrors here.
What was once bold and brave,
is just bleary-eyed and desperate.
You're just a few words on a screen.
Yet some how those words have the weight of worlds.
I was raised on romanticism.
Bred on the idea of love overcoming all.
Ideas are nice.
Reality is stronger.
The body is breathing,
but the soul is gasping for air.
There is a darkness all to familiar.
It blankets the long nights,
hangs over every single day.
Hard to sleep at night,
when you know there are those who walk the earth,
who think as little as you think of yourself.
So I keep drinking.
And I keep running.
Running in to all the wrong arms.
Warming all the wrong beds
and stirring all the wrong hearts.
You're sleeping softly some where else.
But some how...the world keeps turning.

It always begins the same.
You slide behind a cold cold wheel.
The solid black night stretches on forever.
You slip trance like as the lights fly by.
Each one a life with choices and consequences.
Pain and suffering and love and laughter.
Night seems to call to all the places you thought you lost.
Ghosts that should stay dead and buried
Shake the floor and rattle your mind.
Chasing you in every reflection that your eye lingers too long.  
You see it in the steady shake of your hands that you know,
Is more than just the cold you feel on your skin.
There's an emptiness in the night on the long drives
A sadness for all the paths never taken.
All the bridges utterly burned beyond repair.
You could choke on all the words you said.
And be crushed by all the ones you should have...
You keep repeating the same mantra over and over  
A pledge of resolution, a promise of hope.
You need a song to chase away the chill.
One that sounds like dreams look.
The kind that takes you to somewhere different.
Where you're some one different.
Everyone's life looks grand when it isn't yours.
Before you know it, the drive is done.
Because every drive like all the ones before it,
No matter where they may take you,
Where you may go and wherever it takes you.
There is always a road that will take you home...

Hot kiss in the cold rain.
A steady beat of a pulsing vein.
The fearful calm of the never the same.
The sweet aftertaste of your whispered name.
Two extremes inside one heart.
Living in the bewitched twilight of the after dark.
Made a little brighter by this perfect counterpart.
This perfect flame started by a lover's spark.
The relearning of what it means to mean.
Finding the greatest things on earth in the in between.
It's the transition of real life into a dream.
The infusion of love in this neglected bloodstream.
The perfect play of light on the perfect pair of eyes.
The look of which expels the bitter taste of goodbyes.
It's the safety rope for the deepest self dug holes.
Shes a harbinger of love, the savior of souls.
The North Star, that brightest bit of day.
That little feeling inside of you so you never lose your way.
A radiant hope in this desperate living death.
Every inch of her a place to catch your breath.
Made of the stuff of heaven, part blind trust
and perfect mixture of both love and lust.
It all boils and burns into left with only this...
A simple hot kiss,
in a cold rain.
With love flowing in every vein.

There are moments in life.
Then there are moments, in life.
It's a gift to know exactly when
you discovered what love really is.
It was laying ear to ear with you,
So quiet I can almost hear your thoughts.
Cheeks pressed together,
yours so much softer than mine.
Laying, our backs on the cooled pavement
watching the sky spread out,
and the world roll over.
It's knowing I see you in a way few if any will.
A beauty that stretches past words.
Unfindable in any magazine or movie.
A living breathing diamond.
Intangible and unequaled.
It was the late night rides with the windows down.
The heat of the day dying on the breath of the wind.
The entire air charged with nostalgia.
Full of thoughts of friends and memories and feelings.
Watching the headlights cut the darkest parts of the night.
Thinking I'd die before I could find a way
to explain exactly what you mean to me,
but knowing I'd never be so happy to try for the rest of life itself.

I stand on the edge of a growing storm.
Great clouds billow and burst.
Streaks of light chased by tremendous thunder.
But it's on the horizon.
I'm watching it shift and swirl.
I can feel it.
The ground beneath my feet.
That thud, thumping, thump.
The bass at your back.
The beat in your veins.
I pick up my youth right where I left it.
I forgot how to shake and rattle and roll.
Souls are earned not given.
There's a lie in alive,
when you're too busy getting it wrong.
I used to build and watch it break.
Now I'll break all I've ever built.
Ashes to ashes,
dust and rust.
I can feel it...
Burning, ebbing, glowing.
Sweet saccharine life.
A recklessness reserved for the young.
A wisdom earned by age.
Thud, thud, thump.
There's a rush only achieved,
when you've been bent and broken.
Crushed and cornered.
Taken right to the cusp.
And you fight.
You kick, you scratch, you claw.
You get on your ******* feet.
Thump, thump, THUD.
There's is blood under your nails.
Blood in your eyes.
Blood in the water.
You fight.
You win.
There is always a silver lining.
There is always a sunset worth seeing.
There is always a way back.
There is a way in always...
as long as you do it right.