it's funny how
your muscles have a certain memory of things.

like how you can automatically tie
your shoelaces without even thinking
because you've done it so many times,

and how you can play this one song
on piano without even looking
because you've played it so many times,

and you kind of just lived with it
for a short while.

so when you spend a long enough time with someone
your muscles start to memorize
every action they make like how
they breathe into your chest as if you were the only oxygen left
on earth,
or how they fit perfectly
curled up inside you, like it was what your body
was made for in the first place,
and your bodies remember each other,
every slightest touch
can easily be replayed.

and what's funny is that
i can still remember you
even after all this time,
my muscles still imagine you
next to me
and it's funny that
you're not here anymore
yet my body still knows
where your leg would wrap
over mine (just above the knee)
and it's funny that
i'll never stop loving you
because that's what my muscles
will never forget.

Pluck a dandelion from a field
hold the dandelion up to mouth
open mouth
eat the dandelion

Warning: Do not blow the dandelion away.

This isn't fun anymore.

Dear Talia,

I don't want to be a tortured artist.
I don't want to be depressed and I don't want to be anxious.
Competitive sadness and disorders treated like accessories disgust me.

The world glamorizes mental illness, and I don't understand why. There is nothing romantic about being mentally ill just like how there's nothing glamorous about a broken wrist or a torn medial collateral ligament. There's nothing romantic about constantly being afraid that the world will fold in itself and **** you with it. There's nothing romantic about feeling like you could break down and cry at any moment.

This is the first piece I've written while being medicated.

I want it to be Christmas already.

The world dreams itself a halo, but can only attain horns. The halo is an illusion and the horns are an idea.

I'm due to take another Lorazepam. Would I look cool to the kids who idolize dysfunction and misinterpret pain as style, if I were to take one of these, with water and a distant glance, in front of them? Geez, to have their approval would to have everything and nothing at all.

I'm not sure why I've written as much about this as I have.

You.

It is 2:48 am and all I can think about, in this moment, is you.

I can't wait to spend Christmas with you. I can't wait to wear bad Christmas sweaters, and be the couple everyone hates, as we sing Christmas carols and spread holiday cheer.

I wrote this poem a few minutes ago. Sometime around 2:30 am. I'm not sure. I'm exhausted:

I sat on the edge of my bed, and on the edge of my life,
medicated to the point of pointlessness. Soft.
It was the nineteenth, not the twentieth,
and I wished I saw the fireworks with her fifteen days earlier.

My gasps tore the shingles off of the house.
And they hung suspended above the hole in the roof.
And God stared down into my room, as the shingles swirled skyward.
"I see you," I said, "but I don't believe in you."

I left home and ran until I was a dream that had passed itself.


I hope that was okay.

I love you.


Yours,

Joshua Haines