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.

The fans rattling again.
It's not the only thing shaking in the darkness.
But it's making such a loud racket.
I keep it on anyway.
I'm afraid the silence will **** me.
I fight sleep like it's tangible.
You're always waiting there.
Just past consciousness,
standing in the shadows.
It's always the same.
Your backs to me and it will stay that way.
We're standing in a light rain,
the sun just faded.
I know every second that's about to happen,
yet every time it's like a new cut, over and over.
I say all the same words.
I say all different ones.
It never matters.
This story has unfolded a thousand times.
But it's different every time.
Sometimes I chase you.
Sometimes I scream.
Sometimes I beg. And curse.
Sometimes it's you instead.
You won't look at me
because hope is a deadly thing to give.
You know I'll always tell myself its there.
We all see what we want.
Especially when we don't want what we see.
Back in the dream, it's coming.
The part that will sit in the bottom of my soul.
Gathering weight, gathering dust.
You're in front of me,
but you couldn't be further away.
I'm on my knees.
A promise on my lips.
A disaster in my heart.
You step away.
One step, two, four.
Someone has been hammering my chest.
I'm awake.
Stuttered whirs of a broken fan.
The long length of the night stretched out in front of me.
It's only been an hour.

Inhale. Exhale.
I've lost something, but I'm not quite certain of what.
It's feels like when you reach for a wallet or a phone.
Knowing it's there only to find it's not.
There's a brief moment of lightning panic
as you completely blank on where you left them.
I live in that moment now.
Inhale. Exhale.
I know what I need is close, painfully so.
It's in the space between heart beats.
In the lines connecting my memories.
The dust in my dying mind.
Inhale. Exhale.
It had a name I know.
A name that somehow felt like home.
Like it was written in every cell and every bone.
Yet not at all especially special from the others.
Inhale. Exhale.
I breathe and I breathe.
And slowly ever so slowly.
I feel the thrum and vibrations
I feel the noise and chaos
I feel the endless connected expanse.
Inhale. Exhale.
Everything me rushes away like a wayward wave.
I see the rubik pieces of a life in front of me.
I see the mistakes and the losses.
I see too the victories and the happiness.
Inhale. Exhale.
As ever reality comes rising, looming.
But I see the worries and the fears.
I seem them and know their weight.
Like an old pair of jeans or shoes.
Fitting just to you and so familiar.
Inhale. Exhale.
But this is ok.
Because I remember as you always do.
Where we left the most important things to us.
I know her name as I always would.
Who could forget a part of their soul?
Inhale. Exhale.

I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine.
I say it in my head again.
Again.
Out loud.
But just above a whisper.
Repeat it again in the shower.
It gets  lost in the melody.
Mixing in the steam in the background.
Back to the head for shaving and teeth.
Master of using the mirror,
without ever quite looking at myself.
By now I'm remembering you again.
It comes and it goes.
Like a cough like a sneeze like a seizure.
Like a moth to a flame.
                                         Or a maybe an addict.
A bit louder because somewhere,
something lights across my synapses
A face, a laugh, a kiss, a memory.
I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine.
Faster.
Both because I'm late.
And because I'm fearfully close.
Close to that razor fine edge of
put together and hot mess.
I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine.
Keys and gone into the day.
I'll wander the streets.
Because I hope if I listen.
I will hear you too
I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine.

It's fall again.
But suddenly it's spring.
I'm back there with you,
on one of those walks you always begged me to go on.
We're on a wooded trail and the light, well, you're beautiful.
You always are.
I can see it all still, feel it when I close my eyes.
I remember thinking that I don't know how I got there.
Not there as in the trail or the woods or the pretty little bridge we're crossing.
But there, with you.
It sounds cliche but, it's that thought that keeps nagging me.
That little thought that I'm lucky to be here with you.
I close my eyes again and the breeze is flowing through your hair.
We're just kids standing on that bridge.
Older kids, but kids nonetheless.
Thinking back now, we're practically different people now.
I just have this memories of two strangers in love.
The love is the thing that is still the same.
At the same time, it's changed too.
Through all the long nights and longer days.
Through all the text messages and long distance calls.
Through every fight and every laugh.
Every kiss.
There's been a lot of pain, but the growing kind.
Like the ones when you're little and learning to be big.
I can't say when the growing stopped and the learning began.
When we realized this thing, this lighting between us, was real.
Isn't it a funny thing that we fought a hundred hundred times,
yet, if you asked me to name a single cause of all of them...
But I remember this moment in the sun with you so perfectly.
Maybe it's because a boy started seeing a woman,
and maybe he knew he needed to be a man.
Maybe he knew he'd need to be.
I'm back in that moment because I'm scared.
I think you are too.
I'm scared of trying and I'm scared of failure.
Yet I know you still love me, even when
to this day, I still **** the little things up.
I feel like I've gone to war with you.
And against you.
I've bled with, for, and because of you.
I've been ashamed to reveal my truths,
and proud to show you a lie.
I've been broken at your feet,
and rebuilt with just your voice.
I've braved a thousand stormy seas with you,
some of my own commission.
I've done all these things, and I'll do more.
Even though we're so far from where we came,
and no where close to where we'll go,
Even though we aren't the people we were,
maybe not even the people we want to be,
Even though these memories will fade to dust,
and the dust will blow away...
I will always, always love you.

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.

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.

There is something you will come to realise.
Somewhere between regularly scheduled doctor checkups.
Between first credit cards and first credit card debt.
Somewhere around the second or maybe third serious ex.
Some time after the pipe and several dreams.
Long after all those half-cocked convictions
Declaring who and what and how exactly you will be.
A tad older and only slightly wiser.
Always late to funerals and early at parties.
You are a recovering introvert and you'll relapse, often.
You will always try to be ten degrees from the center of attention.
In fact, your want to be needed often supersedes your senses.
You love often, recklessly, but also selflessly.
Do nearly anything for a smile.
You will sometimes be too quick to anger.
Yet someone's tears will always make you soften.
At times, hurt others with a carelessly uttered half thought.
Balanced well by your excessive apologetic nature
and your undying compulsion to be liked.
You will learn the weight of giving your word
and the cost of failing to keep it too.
You will meet friends that feel like family.
And have times when family feels foreign.
But soon understand either is exactly worth
However much you are willing to invest.
Know that you will still have demons hiding around town.
In the end, we must slay our own monsters.
Be our own heroes.
Because ourselves are the only true thing.
We might be this for eternity
or maybe just this sliver.
All the more reason to try.
People improve in shades and moments.
It's a world of entropy and decay.
It's also a world of birth and hope.
A struggle sure, but one towards improvement.
Always try to be a better self than you are.
Because you are all you have.
Take care. It will be ok.

I kiss now and it's never anything.
Sure the motions are made and mostly done well.
But what I find is nothing there.
Unremarkable and unnoticeable
like bumping into someone on the street.
Just something that happens.
Certainly not the fire I felt living behind your smile.
Then again we never really kissed with just our lips.
People tell me this gets better.
You forget what you felt when your eyes met.
You forget how for a little while reality was good.  
You forget a whole life, a whole world.
You just move on.
That's what they say.
But how can that be true at all
if I can still see your face in the sunset?
I can still taste you in summer.
I hear you in every single song.
Can't decide if I was broken first or after.
Life was just better sleeping next to you.
Your the only thing I feel and it burns.
Some days I think I might walk straight into that fire.
But they say that you should never give up.
They say there is always hope.
Things will work out and I will see.
What are the chances of being wrong twice, right?

They told me.
Told me this is right.
I never thought to disagree.
Until we began falling from this lofty height.
I don't know how we got here.
Or where to go.
I can't tell you why my pulse is racing.
While my breathings slow.
I think this has been some sort of accident.
The kind you drive by really slow.
Never has the air between us been less passionate.
You smile, but all I see is the anger just below.
I've watched this love wax.
I don't think I can stand it to wane.
I try to hold harder the more this retracts.
Stuck in this whirring profoundness I can't explain.
I want to stop, but again and again it's all deja vu.
We are surrounded by moutains and molehills.
Perpetually waiting for the other to come through.
Held to some truth that constantly self fufills.
Yet, I just can't bring myself to leave us behind.
I cling, I fight, I pray, I hope, I wail.
because love is patient, love is kind...
They told me love will never fail.

I have trouble coping you.
I really struggle to handle what you manifest.

It's only through sheer force of will
and a glaring lack of skill
that I manage this...overload.
Every kiss is of trepidation.
Leaving the sweet taste of elation.
A fascination with every breath your taking.
So lost I am in this love infused awakening.
Like watching a million roses bloom red hot,
with whatever passion fuels love.
In this ethereal field I'm held caught.
With only the ability to spew such smarmy adoration.
Almost completely lacking of thought, sense, or annunciation.
No less heartfelt or without the weight of sincerity.
In every word, oath, emotion, thought or change you make in me.
Changes that come unwilling but not unwanted.
Now dreams are the stuff of life and by life I am haunted.
This is the discovery of real love,
a desperate thirst and need that you can never sate.
The medium through which you can dream of loftier things like fate.
This and all that is beyond surpasses all its worth.
Because for a moment, we are greater than all the earth.

Hey...
It's such a little big word.
Its also for some reason what comes out of my mouth,
Before any other combination of words in the known world.
You look like you deserve more than that.
Yet, here I am, mouth probably too far open
Staring at you for what I imagine is too long
Creating a moment in time I'll probably obsess over forever.
I'm clearly awful at hello's and new beginnings.
I'm even worse at saying goodbye.
Which is what I'm always worried I'll hear first.
How do you explain yourself to someone else?
Someone somewhere set all these unspoken rules,
I've never been able to figure it out.
But you have kind eyes and it makes me want to try.
There is something ephemeral about the whole process.
It's such a weird weird ritual that keeps the world spinning.
Hey...I'm a person and so are you.
Here are all these things that make me...me.
But that's not what I say. Not what anyone says.
We say hey.
I can't tell you how I'm both confident and anxious all at once.
How you look beautiful, but you could very well destroy me.
I can't say how I stay up forever and relive my life in moments.
I can't say how I'm a narcissist who doesn't believe in himself.
I can't say in all my time on Earth, **** is still the strongest word I know.
Or how I swear something other than your body attracted me to you.
It isn't something I know, but I sure want to.
I can't say I have a soul that cares about people more than it should.
Or that I could care about you, if you wanted me to.
I can't say how it took the kind of courage normally found in soldiers
Just to walk the twenty feet to where you're standing.
But here I am and there you are.
Drink in hand and a smile that could stop a heart.
With the moments before and after I speaking lasting an eternity.
I swear the world starts spinning again when you reply...
Hey.

I struggle.
the stress of it.
not worth the result it produces.
You smile.
the strain of it.
not worth the sadness it reduces.

You cry.
always alone.
always in the deepness of night.
I find.
never soon enough.
new ways to bring the light.

I am.
turned the wrong right way round.
making me consistently inconsistent.
You are.
a compass of life.
caring, giving, patient and persistent.

You wear.
a mask of lives.
a carefully constructed web of lies.
I bring.
a depth of right.
that your strength of will defies.

We are.
two sides.
always oppositely opposing.
We share.
impossibly.
the feelings we're imposing.

I struggle.
no more.
careworn becomes carefree.
You smile.
a passion filled effort.
as it always was meant to be.

Real life isn't like T.V.
It doesn't cut away to commercial.
It doesn't end always end in resolution.
Real life is messy and it's loud.
Its watching a marriage of several decades
Snuffed by the end that takes us all.
It's being more empty then you've ever felt.
It's music played loudly and substances abused.
It's poor choices and poorer results.
It has more problems then fit in to a thirty minute slot.
Life doesn't get resolved at the end of the season.
Sometimes it breaks you.
Real life isn't a hero saving the day.
It doesn't get a clear antagonist.
The villain is the never ending eternal grind.
Real life is full of broken promises and lost dreams.
Full of half people and drifting hearts.
But every now and then, as it will
When the chaos adds up just so
and the events cascade in the right way
Real life is just like T.V.
Once in a moment
You find everything you need.
Because long after the reruns turn infomercial
Real life continues on.
It lasts forever but for us,
It's over in the blink of an eye.
But that's not scary.
Endings are ok.
Because if you have that someone.
You never have to fear closing your eyes.

Ash black night.
Whipping river rain.
The screams like hammers.
A home is dying.

The night is a physical thing.
Flooded with the rapid waters of change.
The boy inside his room is oblivious,
he can hardly hear the rain over the massacre

The crack of thunder
sickly syncopated
with the rending of a vow.
The window is his world.

Light is born, and dies all at once.
Searing the shelter he calls home.
He sits, tiny to the world.
Perfect picture of alone.

There’s a war in the sky
and another down the hall
Which will never be long enough
To drown out the ceaseless splitting.

It seems the rain will not be ignored
soon, its prattling is the only sound.
Somehow time skipped this place,
Stole away a childhood to the deepness of night.

Dawn is breaking
Illuminating what is broken
The boy that was, is among the pieces,
but wiser, older eyes cannot find him.

I've done it hundreds of times.
Put my pen to paper,
and watch the words flow right out.
I like to think of myself as a lightening rod.
For emotions, images, and ideas.
I'll catch a spark every so often,
but once in awhile...
I explode with white hot brilliance.
This never happens at will.
Like now, there's no storm today.
Clear crystal skies.
It feels like suffocating.
Like the words are hiding, just beyond focus.
But right in plain view.
I think I'm to critical
of all my critical thinking.
Being whimsical doesn't really come on a whimsy.
I want to write something deep.
Makes you think. Connect.
Like that song...
you know the one.
The one that makes you feel your every emotion.
Like there's soul wrapped around every word.
A message in the melody.
I want people to find themselves in these words.
Even as it is myself I am pouring into them.
You know, I think I see a cloud or two.
Looks like there's a storm after all.
I can smell the rain...

Life is costly on the soul,
and can jade the mind.
The wrongs of the world are a shameless sort of currency.
With Hate being the dollar.
Lust being the quarter,
and Greed the dime.
I think Pain is the nickel,
and Sin is just a penny.
Common and accepted.
Small wonder some are rich.
Small wonder the meek inherit the world.
Everyone's got a coin in their pocket.
Some try and get rid of theirs once a week.
But we all get paid at some point.
Money is necessary, just like justification.
If only so we can get by.
Maybe it would be better were we all young, drooling, and naive.
Innocence was never something we were meant to keep.
Life is like a game of tallies.
In the end the one with the fewest scars is the winner.
In the end we're all keeping our own scores.
In the end its all just scars and small wonders.
In the end its all just one simple question.
Did you leave more scars,
or did make more small wonders?

I can feel it already,
a steady stream of dopamine.
It's flowing right beneath your skin.
I can tell there will be no wading in here.
I don't know yet if this is harmony
or the calm quiet before the hurricane.
Or if I care one way or another.
Or which one of us is the storm.
I worry because I worry a lot more,
Smile a lot less.
These days I manufacture my happiness.
You do strange things to survive your demons.
Was easier to develop Stockholm, then slay them.
I'm still the same down on his luck kid.
Chasing away ghosts in the streets.
I'm on a cyclical self-sabotage trip.
It's not until you might get what you want,
that you wonder if you deserve it at all.
But it doesn't matter,
I'm already drunk on you.
It never feels the same twice.
But it's the best drug I know.
And truthfully,
You seem worth the overdose.

The girl is liquid.
A magnet for lust
for things moms forbid
breaking hearts and trust.
Beauty realized.
Stunning, though she is
pure pain in disguise.
Destined to be Miss.
The start of downfall
and cause of rapture.
She is alcohol.
What you can't capture.
The perfect design.
Demon or divine?

In the darkness the quiet is complete
for only in the snow does the world find sleep.
With thoughts as heavy as the air is cold,
trapped in every single secret never told.

Yet, love is love is love is love
worth so much more for all I am guilty of.
My minds lost in this perfect snow white deep
and none of these thoughts will ever bring me sleep.

Its with the sorest of muscles and tiredest of eyes
that I lift to watch another infinite sunrise.
I don't know who I am, or where to go, or how to be.
But this is all becomes hushed whispers when you're next to me.

If there ever was a definition of you and me,
it would look something like a mix of confusion and clarity.
And when you leave I'm left with all of you I miss,
which can only be consoled with your perfect kiss.

You're a snow angel, quiet and pure.
Full of love and uncertainly sure.
I hate to melt you for just a taste of serenity
but I'm so helplessly lost in this complete concinnity.

As I walk down this snow laden path
with the deep cold glued to the air,
the likes of which could never quite match you,
I listen to these memories of you that I don't remember.
Kind of like an old calendar, it was once useful.
Now its just full of old time and forgotten days.
But the mind is like that.
Its forced to remember and to know.
Its forced to feel old scars and seek new ones.
Forced to know you.
How you were mine,
but that's not quite right is it?
But the mind is like that.
Believing things it thinks it knows.
You are a cancer in remission.
They haven't quite cured love yet.
Even though its oh so much deadlier than hate.
The mind is like that.
Remembering things it shouldn't, wouldn't, and doesn't wish too.
It remembers all the same...

and the wind still whispers your name...

There's change in the air.
I can see that you see it too.
Grasping at straws that aren't there.
Resolutions falling short of I love you.
Heads down, backs turned.
Watching every door we opened slam shut.
Listening to the music of us slowly burn.
Leaving only the pain of a heavy heart and twisted gut.
Going mad from all this pointless splitting.
The problems that never seemed important before now,
lately have become monstrous and unremitting.
My mind wanting things my heart won't allow.
Every breath you take laden with a heavy sigh,
born from both frustration and fear.
Of that single hollow word, goodbye,
and that we won't make it through the year.
I want to tell you I have all the answer's when I don't.
I want to tell you we'll make it, but then, maybe we won't.
I want to push you away and pull you in.
I want us to restart, to never ever end.
I want to laugh and love and live again.
Because it's you and only you, always has been.

Time hasn't changed here.
I still come alive at night
to feel the ground breath
exhaling the day’s heat.
The earth’s sweet sighs are carried on the wind,
embracing me like an old friend.

I listen.
The stars are out.
Arranged in all their glorious chaotic order.
I want to hear their whispered conversations,
in a language I'll never comprehend.
I find myself between the light and the void,
and then lose it again under these stellar skies.

Tomorrow is pressing at the edges,
filling me with a need
to do, to think, to say
things with the consistency of meaning.
It’s nothing I can ever manage.

The rain begins so slowly
almost as if it were hesitant,
but the clouds soon find confidence.
I let my thoughts pour like the storm
In little rivets, falling in the air
bursting on the ground, dried and forgotten.
The here and the why and the what for.
Each one precipitated and each one, unanswered.

Light is finding its legs
silencing the stars as it creeps along.
For a precious agonizing moment,
everything is silent.
I close my eyes and dream,
There’s always been comfort in a sunrise.

Are there any heavier words than home or heart?
Is there anything more difficult than being so, so sure
about one very specific thing?
Even when every one is telling you otherwise.
But there's your heart
And then there's life.
It's always there clawing at the windows in my head.
Life by the shoe strings or life by the nail marks.
It branches and twists and turns.
Every path visible and not at the same time.
Futures yours and not.
This life and that one and that one.
All on your shoulders, all weighing you down.
I mean I still ride the cart in the grocery parking lot.
Back to my car in the dark with the stupidest grin on.
Yet I must figure my entirety right now.
So I choose this path and that one.
Take this step and that jump.
And suddenly I'm in a place  I don't know.
Things have happened I barely understand.
I am someone that I don't know.
And the more I look the more I'm sure.
Every path left to me is absent the same you.
The same you that showed me what a smile really was.
Everyone has that one moment where they finally see it.
That one smile in all the books and movies and songs.
The one meant for you.
Knowing all that I now know
Seeing all the futures here and not
Where in all of whats left is your smile?
Or is this yet another insufferable lessons?
Realizing some smiles aren't meant for you after all.
It just sure really feels that way.
and then finally understanding
There is absolutely no way to tell the difference.

What exactly is the sound of a heart breaking?
Is it the careless mention of a name in casual conversation?
Is it the way little moments of agony interweave in to the day?
Moments that really only last a few sudden seconds
but feel like little pin ****** in a soul.
Is it the way a smile will never quite reach the eyes again?
Is it the way seeing a couple laugh and embrace
only further illuminates the loneliness carried inside.
Or is it the sweet sound of someone's first kiss
That makes a chest tighten and a pulse race.
Because sometimes love witnessed is love remembered.
And sometimes remembering is too much.
What is the sound of a heart trying to feel again?
Is it the desperate craving for the softest touch?
Or rapid hot electric rush when deep inside someone?
Is it embracing the pain each and every night?
Waiting for the day where the numbness wins out.
Is it burning the mind with every single sad melody made?
Like a poisoned man searching frantically for a cure.
Or is it the slow realization this is never really over.
It never really goes away.
Hiding all this hurt just gets a little easier.
Until it just doesn't get mentioned.
Just a dark corner in a darker heart.
The emptiness just becomes a little less...empty.
The days become lighter and longer.
The nights not quite as crushing and ceaseless.
Almost like it never even happened at all.
Then the cracks give way and scar over.
What then, is the sound of a heart falling in love?
Is it letting the color seep back in to the world?
Is it the slow deep breaths shared in the night?
Or the feeling thrumming in every cell of the skin?
Is it the crash of a kiss?
The pressure of arms around arms?
Or is it the miracle of everything being new again?
The sound of a heart breaking is simple.
It's the sound of a heart learning to live again.

There's a problem with putting off a problem.
Remember that when you put something out of sight,
but not quite out of mind...
Shelving it for later, top right in the very back.
More importantly no where near the front.
Then one day it gets to heavy, the shelf cracks and caves.
Now its right in your face, tugging at your heartstrings.
This is a flood that's been years in the making.
I've got too much straw and not enough back
to possibly keep it in the corner it's grown larger in.
The pressing questions weighing all the more after the process of time.
The kind of questions that cause late nights.
The kind that worry all your fingernails right off.
The kind that may never have an answer.
Least not one that provides any satisfaction.
Some holes can't be filled,
and some roles can't be replaced.
You were never there, why try now?
It's funny all the effects I never stopped once to consider.
Had to do without, grow up without.
Grow up alone.
Am I better for it?
Probably.
Can I ever forgive you?
Maybe.
Does it still hurt?
Forever.

The phrase fall in love can be misleading.
Sometimes it's less of a graceful, gentle swell
a sort of feeling that slowly seeps into your soul,
but more like a smack in the face or a missing step.
You know that feeling you get where foot finds air?
But infused with a giddy naivety which for a second makes you feel ageless.
One minute everything's normal, business as usual
the next, it's like you were never really alive at all.
You say their name, and it's a name like others,
but there's a taste when you say it.
Something's different, something's shifted.
I remember once when I was very young.
A teacher wanted me to read the board.
I couldn't I told her, it was too far.
I was in the front row.
When they slipped the lenses over my eyes,
the world exploded.
Colors and hues, things never noticed.
Falling for someone can be like that.
A sweet collision of realities.
An inexplicable deep attraction.
The terror of a hundred new possibilities.
The feeling like you are approaching a mental cliff.
Knowing full well you're jumping regardless.
Sometimes you fall in love,
sometimes you just find yourself there.

The air feels like you.
Like the you I knew.
The wind whispers in my ear.
It sounds like you too.

I don't let it in anymore.
The pain, all the scars.
They would crush me.
Yet, sorrow has a way of seeping.

Like ink from a broken pen,
it spreads, staining all it touches.
Can't get your name off my mind.
Can't get your face out of my heart.

I know every inch of you.
I know nothing about you.
It's a deep inexpressible need.
An ache so deep, so strong.

There are answers I'll never find.
Wrongs that won't be made right.
So I'll swallow my pride and pain,
but the wind still whispers your name...

Such a broken heart.
Such a broken smile.
To rebuild it all again...
would take a painful while.

Logic tells me,
you'll never forgive her.
My misplaced love tells me,
you'll never forget her.

Yet, that's all I wish.
To forget those beautiful eyes
with the winter hidden behind.
To forget that breath taking smile
made with the same sweet lying lips.
To forget that name that rang like bells
now so synonymous with sleepless nights.
To forget that face surely of an angel...
yet, certainly stolen by someone much less kind.

The wind feels like you.
Like the you I knew.
But that you is gone.
I never knew her all along...

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...

Its the piercing silence...
that allows it to sink in.
The undeniable fact,
that I may never see you again.

If you could see me now,
I wonder what you'd say?
Would you smile so serene
or simply nod and turn away?

So easily love comes to me,
like the morning of a day.
Yet, so fast it fades away.
But, I know not how else to be.

Love is like sifting stones and sand.
Unable to keep whats important.
It all slips right through your hand.
Left only with the hardness of solitude.

If you could see me now,
I wonder what you'd feel.
Would you even sense the hole of it?
Would you believe that love is real?

Life starts so simple,
and sometimes, simply ends.
So never let silence stretch
past the point you can't make amends.

If you could see me now
would you love me as before?
Or would you say goodbye again
to leave me questioning what we were for?

The mind is willing
but, the heart is weak.
My ears are burning
just to hear you speak.

Yet, that is the way life must be.
Cause, effect, and up and down.
So hard it is to think and feel
when the world spins ceaselessly around.

So, if you could see me now,
would you recognize what I've become?
For good or bad,
Love changes all but some...

Nothing makes you dissect yourself more completely
than discovering you want someone to like you.
A thousand internal worries rattle around my head all night.
Trying to find all my flaws before you do.
Life has had an easy time of keeping me low.
so it's hard to tell where my good luck ends and you begin.
Your eyes say safety, but your lips taste like danger.
I guess this is what they call a calculated risk.
I've grown old making the best of bad situations.
You make me feel like I'm catching my breath.
For now, I'm stuck between enjoying this moment
and the one where I eventually drive it all away.
More afraid that what you'll say is jump instead. 
I won't be able to stop myself from leaping.
You make me want to tear a hole through every sunset.
Scream at the sky and dance in the rain.
Believe again, in all the happy endings.
Even if it all burns down, in the end,
we will just laugh madly and carry on.
But I've known this since I heard you laugh,
and again, and again, every time you say my name.
We'll fall together, and maybe we'll fall to pieces.
I'll be your parachute, and you be my safe place.
We can sort it all out later or never at all.
So just say so, we'll swing recklessly through every night.
High on each other and completely consumed.
Because you've crashed into me and lately,
I'm not sure I care if we ever untangle.

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.

He said, "Son, you're taking the high road."
I said it sure felt like the low.
But I have a habit of self-obsessing.
In between sessions of self-critical second-guessing.
Sometimes it's just more how you feel, less of what you know.

Somehow, along the way I lost who I was.
Found more about who I really am.
I found home in a saccharine smile.
The first who feels worth all the while.
Sometimes it really as simple as just because.

You are like the perfect song coming on at the perfect time.
You are like the warmth in the last rays of a vivid sunset.
You are like petrichor and the electricity before the storm.
You are like the sweetest half-remembered dream after a nap.
You are like the feeling from a fire in the coldest winter night.
You are like the ocean with secrets and unexplored depths.

I think we become crazy for the ones we love.
I fell for you and never considered getting out.
You feel inevitable and as familiar as a holiday.
You mean things that I could never hope to convey.
Even if its nuclear, I'm staying for the fallout.
Sometimes a soul really does meet a mate.

I've had the exact same waking dream since eighteen.
It's the one where we're all stuck in jobs we hate
Watching life grow shorter seconds at a time.
Sold on the idea of tomorrow
Of the faith in hope and simple love.
Then there was you.
And now you're not.
Now you're a hangover I can't sleep off.
But I'll try and smoke until I can't see your face
I'm going to drink you right out of my veins.
I'm going to forget what life even tasted like
and rip you out of every cell I have left.
Because I'm down and so far out.
The problem with running away from everything
is that one day...you stop.
You look around and not a **** thing makes sense.
I haven't had a real conversation since we spoke.
I haven't seen a color the same way since you said bye.
I'm just existing.
I haven't met a bottle I didn't escape to
Or a night that I wasn't dragged through.
or a bed that I didn't crawl in.
Even if someone not you was in it.
I've found the easiest way to burden a soul is with regret,
but the quickest way to **** one...
Is with love.