I took my time today.
I walked the way I used to walk with you,
not worrying about where the next step took me.
I missed two buses.
I got home half an hour late.
Or early.
It doesn’t matter anymore,
everything is relative.
Next week will be this week.
Yesterday is already tomorrow.
I’ve always heard that time is cruel;
too quick when you want it,
too slow when you don’t.
I’m not really sure what to think anymore,
because it’s been three months,
but I still think about you every day.

I have imagined this moment over and over again and now it's finally happening and I can't quite tell which direction is up or down or backwards but I guess they're all directions so it really doesn't matter as long as I'm going somewhere. I've been watching my shoelaces as I've been walking and they seem to tighten with every step as though even they know you'll have me floating right out of them. My palms have already begun to sweat and the puddles they've created in my pockets are just deep enough to drown in. I look up for a second to see the air in front of me holding a string. A grin spreads across its face as it suddenly begins to pull and my breath is stolen from my lungs. I reach out to grab it but it has already disappeared and suddenly I realize I can't breathe without you here. I close my eyes and stumble, not wanting to go any further, not wanting to face the reality of a situation that doesn't involve sleeping beside you. But then I realize, that was something we never did. I have been falling asleep beside myself for years, I have been waking up with regret and a heart broken into more pieces then the number of tiles on the bathroom floor. I have been sleeping with my head on my own chest and praying that someday you'd fill the empty space between not being able to fall asleep and never wanting to be awake.

I have always imagined your touch as sunlight
As the heat trapped beneath my blanket when I first wake up
As the rug warming my bare feet in the morning
But that was before I realized I was loving a ghost
Before I saw my breath in front of my face
And realized we had just shared our first kiss
Before I wrapped my arms around myself after walking outside
Feeling the air cut through my skin like a thousand knives
Now I see you in the bottom of every glass
When I am left feeling even emptier than before I took a drink
Now I see you at the bottom of every staircase
As a reminder that even if I would jump
You wouldn't be there to break my fall
Because no matter how far a ghost's arms may reach
They'd never be solid enough to catch me.

There are cannibals in my bed eating
the crumbs inside my head
the crumbs that you left
upon the ground
the things we kept
unsaid
(or said)
either way there was
no sound
entering or exiting
your lips as they danced
entirely still
wonderfully entranced
enigmatic notes struck
on the chord
of feeling and thinking
I am painfully bored
enthralled and excited
hands rolled in corridors
with tobacco droplets
and simple syrup
drowning the thought
of your features
that resemble canyons and hills
i forgot our love
is hibernating in the skin
of a tree in the mountains
outside of sedona
and i forgot the way the pinholed
stars sang to us
and i forgot the way
our hands became one
but it lingers
and it vibrates
it reminds me
of a fold in the fabric
the way it was eternal
yet fleeting
forever
but not nearly long enough

You always use the back button
on your phone,
never the home button.
You’re scared of exiting something completely.
You’re scared of leaving things behind.
You’re scared that home will take you far away.
But home was never meant to be something
to run away from.
It isn’t the park down the street
where you played as a kid,
or the hardwood floor you collapse onto
when hours past midnight become
too much to handle.
It’s not the splintered wood and bent nails
that keep the four walls around you standing.
Home doesn’t have an address.
Home never had an address.
Home was always right here with you.
It’s always right here with you.
So when things become too much
and you feel too weak to push forward,
you will learn to push the home button,
and you will find me.
I will be home for you.
I will always be home for you.

Ernest Hemingway once said
"Write drunk; edit sober."
But to hell with that,
I'll give you my worst.
I'll give you all the pieces
when my heart decides it's too much
or too little
and my mind forgets the difference.
I swear I'll sink right through the floorboards
if you don't find someway to fill the spaces.
You are the sand clenched in my
scraped up palms,
sticking to the worst parts of me;
the ones that everyone else finds
too messy,
too broken,
too tired,
too empty.
You find someway to keep my broken limbs
moving forward, even when I have nothing left.
I have nothing left.
There is nothing left.
And I've checked this over a thousand times
to make sure every letter is in its proper place.
It must be perfect,
even if I'm not.
Because even if I give you my worst,
you always deserve more than my best.

I’m falling desperately for pieces of you,
and all of you at the same time.
I know I’ve stumbled in so deep,
but there’s still more for me to find.
If you’d like you can call me a fool,
and I’ll be as foolish as they come,
but that still won’t explain how
your eyes make me go numb.
I’m keeping every little bit,
because I can’t bear
to let it go.
The subtle curve your soft lips make
when they hear me say your name,
and the freckle on your collarbone,
your right, my left.
I think of how I feel so much more than skin
when you simply brush against me.
Your hand in mine.
My left, your right.
This isn’t a poem,
it’s a 3 am conversation on your basement couch
and a quiet night spent on the bench next to the lake.
I can never write poems about you,
because it’s impossible to write a poem
about poetry itself.