this afternoon i saw a cowboy driving a minivan on 84
there’s not a whole lot to be said about that

oh god i was worried i had a lump in my breast that my body was finally following the maternal prophecy that is passed along like a family heirloom
turns out it was just one of my ribs i haven’t felt in years
or maybe ever

i like to pretend the aches and pains are just in various places a heart could be if we were existing on multiple planes
nothing poetic about my body decaying rapidly around me because i need to stop treating it like it’s a leg caught in a trap, trying to limp its way to the end of the highway

i am not sure why i hold on to things that don’t need to be held so tightly
it’s like i beat the dead horse before it even had the chance to die

your mom is selling the piano we used to sing at together and i am finally, finally, finally deleting your voicemails
making cosmic and electronic room for more and less and the same
my childhood bedroom is up for sale again and it’s not like me to not look back but i find myself shifting focus to a future that i haven’t even opened up to
i own a car i haven’t cried in
i own a house you haven’t seen
i own a dog you haven’t met
i own too much and not enough

don’t tell me there is nowhere to go but up
poetically, metaphorically, and physically i am 6 feet under ground
(basement living baby)
fake plants i can’t **** next to childhood mementos i won’t let go of
there’s so many things i am not ready to let go of

i have been spending more time trying to force a different timeline
stand here, tug the string, open close open close open close the laundry room door
the sun still shines the same here and there and nowhere and everywhere and trying to make sense of it all could take all night

it can’t be all or nothing and it can’t be none or something
i will miss you when you die but i will be thankful for the warmth in the meantime
my head is full of glitter but my legs are full of cinder blocks and i didn’t know i was signing up for a lifetime of being left behind

reverse collateral in the form of switched favorite sweatshirts
a future promise and split lips from making up for lost time
i didn’t feel as cold as i usually do because i was the sun shining from the inside to the outside

texting my loved ones like i am writing them individually wrapped “i miss you” poems
i am so full of this wanting of wanting to reach out and wanting to reach back in

no longer aspiring for greatness, simply aspiring to find the middle ground

i think what hurts the most is that i have been holding onto memories of you longer than you ever held me

this isn’t appropriate or necessary but for the past 3 years i have been aching for an another intoxicated text that would tell me i came up in a conversation

how can i rewrite a goodbye in terms either of us can cope with?
let’s blame the weather or the medication or the elephant politely sitting on the loveseat or the piles of ***** laundry
we can’t keep meeting like this

i’m excited to know you more than sometimes, but sometimes i cry about parties i never got to go to  

and you’ll learn that i love the east coast the way i love the outside of a bed
the only thing i am consistent with is my ability to be half in half out

don’t you miss when things were so out of sorts that it still felt like home?

we have been here before
that means something
not sure what but it does

there’s 2 weeks 5 years ago that i would have done anything (i mean anything) to change
don’t you know i would have done it all?
football games, brunch with your mom, climbed the stairs of the museum a hundred times if it meant we would be off-center and a little cloudy like my mom said
i keep writing these hoping you will see just one

there’s an absence in my bed that i can’t help but feel with all of me
there’s an absence in my head that i can’t feel at all
let me know when you get the smoke signals that i started sending again
let me know how leo season treated you this year

trying my best to write this as if you’re not running out of time
not everything’s about me but shifting the blame never helped either of us, did it?
i can't help but keep reading and then rereading between the lines of the text messages that i have been getting less and less of since march 13th
recently what i have so far is
"aw, dan
that's incredibly kind"
"what if i get more tired? either from napping or in general"
i don't know what life is going to be like when he finally stops waking up
i guess we are both just waiting to find out

there’s an 80% chance that i became a vegetarian just so i would never again have the opportunity to taste the pizza that we had that weekend at your brothers apartment when we watched 2 seasons of bojack horseman

does it mean something that we have been apart 5x as long as we were together?

i’d rather spend these nights driving than try to catch up to you
i’m almost out of gas anyways
i should have held on a little tighter,
called you a few less times,
moved 212 miles away from home,
brushed myself off and got up from the bathroom floor,
stopped ghosting my therapists,
taken my meds with any form of regularity
sunday nights are for figuring out that voicemails from the front seat of your car can only last so long before the static cuts in and cuts it off too short

you said “thank you for understanding”
so i said “yeah, always”
you said “i’ll hold you to always” and god as long as you can still hold me, i’ll forgive you even if it’s only for a minute
sometimes i’m not sure that i wish that i knew how many minutes were left

i guess it’s fine, i’ll never be able to understand it anyways
we’ll shift the blame from me to you from you to me and back again a couple different ways, call each other when we’re stuck in our own snowbanks, try again a couple years later, rinse, and ******* repeat

maybe it means something that i finally had the first dream about you where you said “we can’t ever do this, remember why it didn’t work out? we have to stop meeting like this”

oh, it couldn’t be me holding back the urge to text you “god i would have had a child with you”

there’s a dent in my pillow where we used to tell our future

the card on my wall from a dorm room full of a dead support system
“we love you danny very very much”

to be fair, we were on borrowed time to begin with
i feel the static in my jaw and the way your contact information felt like i was running out of phone calls
am i the object or am i the permanence ?
am i the other shoe waiting to drop or are we the burning building?

if you start to feel your feelings, don’t

something about waxing poetic about a playlist restarting at the beginning as i drive by your house (again)
“And i thought that i would miss it while still wishing that i didn't”
a bag of someone else’s clothes in my backseat
a mindset that i wish i wasn’t still holding out for a “want to take the train again? for old times sake? come home, babe, it’s time we take that hatchet and throw it in the schuylkill”
a no longer flickering light near the cemetery
i can still see myself teetering on that edge, reaching for a short term hand
i don’t know what to do with this
i’m the only one that still drives home

closing my eyes so i can think of a time when grade school assignments seemed attachment worthy and the jar of 222 reasons meant hope and a future and reassurance and god i never even made it halfway through the scraps of paper
111 was always a shortcut
i guess i should’ve known that you had an emergency exit, huh
is it weird that your girlfriend shares your moms name?
do you ever walk by that museum with her; you know the one where you said you wanted kids?

to think i’ve convinced myself that this life is anything less than an empty white room without you is beyond reason
with bug spray scented skin and alcohol on my breath
lately my mouth has been spilling over with apologies

as this gemini season crescendos to a screeching dissonant halt, i am unsure if i am going to be able to live with the events that i didn’t entirely force to transpire
when my mouth fills with blood i am unable to tell if the source is from my wounds or yours

i guess i’ll vape about it
shake about it
crawl on my hands and knees down the stairs, hold my breath about it

i can hear an engine up to a mile and a half away because you evolve to have supersonic hearing when 60 seconds will make all the difference

let’s write some more songs about a self-fulfilling prophecy
but maybe things will be different if we learned to hear the subtext
imagine an okay but tattooed by the mile
scrawling my gods on 4 walls that get closer together by the hour
shift the focus and
for now it’s enough

i confess i’m a mess but only in the sense that my problems are future tense
i can hear the door knobs rolling down the hall but honeyface, sweetie, grass biscuit
i think i’m unshakeable now

it’s 3 am and they smell like my dad did in 2011 and 2012 and every day from then on
i didn’t know getting older meant living with everyone else’s fuckups
i didn’t know getting older meant silencing myself in the presence of my peers in an attempt to disintegrate into dust because what the ****?? how do you talk to anyone new when you’re the only sober one

break my collar bones again
on the days i find it hard to just exist, i have friends who will squeeze my ankles and my knees and anchor me down to a planet i’m not sure i was ever meant for
sorry i’ve never quite been able to articulate what it means for me to have been around the sun 23 times but **** i wasn’t supposed to make it this far

this winter is chewing me up and spitting me out in the way only cold weather can

i miss late night phone calls most when i remember i’m not the one who makes them anymore

i would just like to say, from the absolute bottom of my heart,

****

the nonexistent satisfaction of what i’ve come to know as past tense
i’m still feeling your handwriting tracing my collarbones and cheeks and the way tears seemed to float off my face and into the pockets of your jeans

i sunk the ship and i burned the house down
sing me to sleep or shake me awake
you want honesty?
you’re looking in the wrong mirror, honey
leave a message after the beep

please for the love of god don’t let her in your bedroom and the kitchen floor and where your mom saw us share moments we would have loved to have not kept secret

it’s not you, it’s your situation
it’s not me, it’s my childhood tramua
tell me to ******* or tell me the truth
tell me about teeth sunk into unwilling flesh and how i was never a peach and i've always been the ******* sun

it’s been 365 days of laughing and crying and screaming and kissing and ******* and driving and running and outrunning and laying on the floor wondering if/when things are finally going to change
2019, do be kind to me

pulling my tired bones and muscles out a bed that seems too big for me now
in a room that once held laughter and love without terms and conditions
i don’t replace the light bulbs anymore and i don’t change the sheets as often as i should and the pile of laundry is suffocating me
i replay the night over and over in my head of you laughing and me spilling whiskey and bodies too close but too far for anything real

i can still hear the chorus of “will you let me in” like it’s my own heartbeat

let me know if i am being too cruel when i say “if we met now would we even recognize each other?”
years of shoving nicotine and alcohol down our throats and foreign mouths on ours amplify the passing of the short amount of time it really has been
it’s not like me to depend on a new substance but god the crackling of a 4 year old voicemail is like the throat hit of a lifetime
my joints still ache like that weekend in the city and i don’t know if i’ll ever stop hurting
i feel like we are fighting the inevitable and i am the only one who knows it
let me know if you get this smoke signal

we were waiting for the amtrak
we were going to stick it out
god i should have put you on mute because insensitivity and ******* senseless words have no place to rest on my shoulders
i’m not a 2:30 am drunken dare and, well, ******* for making me into one
“i am not a jealous man” and other ******* you let everyone else believe
i hope the next time i see you is your funeral

i’m glad the tour your band took in 2016 was successful and i hope you can still hear a crowd echoing your words
even though i was the only one who could hum them under my breath
ill take the next train out from hartford if you promise to meet me @ penn station
at least i see you in my dreams, love
they say that dreams are an alternate reality given we spend about 6 years in them
i don’t really know who “they” are but maybe they’re wrong  
and if dreams are all that i will have left of you i suppose i should take what i can get

i don’t want a fall wedding anymore
i don’t want kids anymore (i never really wanted them anyway but i would have flown to the moon if you only asked)
i don’t want to keep up with the band name list and i don’t want a whole state to be surrounded by metaphorical barbed wire but i guess that’s all i can be left with since the last three years have brought me no comfort and no closure

we were going to burn the city to the ground
we were going to wake up sleepy sunday mornings with the sounds of life we should have never had to dream about
why does it feel like i’m still waiting for you to come home?

i used to paint the town red with the blood from my mouth
i could count the phases of the moon from the crescents caused by the digging of my nails into my hands
it was easier that way

late night side streets accompanied by no one but a playlist and a flashlight
i ran while crossing the road to get to anywhere
sometimes i wonder if the street light near the cemetery still flickers
and if i have any claim to the gravel behind the post office
does your mom ever tell you that i drive by your house?
when i finally woke up beside the lake i didn’t know it would feel like nothing

i am doing just fine, thank you
do you remember how i liked to keep in touch?  

thinking about the united states postal system and how i feel lost in the mail

i want to scream the way i did in 2016 but with the words that my mouth will allow but haven’t said except for in substance induced sleep
driving faster to get to my destinations so i don’t have to think about the outcome has become more of a victory song than a death march
i’ve started writing songs again!
i’ve started smiling at the sunset!
if we keep waking up before the sunrise we’ll last a little longer

the sun still sets in east hartford just like i’m sure it does in philly
2 more minutes
i’m too high for comfort on this sunday night and i’m starting to grasp the concept of denial
i would have stopped us on that friday night in a restaurant
i remember us like a low budget movie
how can we forget the red lights reflected on a wet city street
the front bottoms play us out while the credits roll and flashing videos of smiles only for us and a love only you had outgrown
call me when you get home
drive safely
stop reminding me to take my meds because i’m letting the prescription expire like we did

even if i can’t open the curtains to let the sun in someone has to remind me that ******* it there’s a whole universe out there and it will wait
everything stays right where i left it
and everything stays right where time stood still
i’m still in my mother’s basement writing small chunks of song on a 4 stringed instrument hoping to god someone can hear me
ambivalence isn’t a strong character trait and it’s the year i start asking for more

the rules of the game are simple
keep the dust from collecting and keep your hands out of your hair
keep the sink empty
god i have got to get out of my house
i’m going to eat the concrete from the streets and scrape my knees so they have something to talk about

no one comes home anymore because these streets don’t carry the same weight that we used to
i drive by houses
because i don’t know who i am without some sort of substance in my system and i don’t know what to do once the final laugh of the night dies in the way only an intoxicated joke can

i think i’m spinning out again and i’m glad i got too drunk to drive when i heard you were at a party 26 miles away

moth dust covered fingers reminding me of a summer i hate and love remembering

i hope you swipe right until your fingers fall off

i’m taking the light from the street lights and chasing a sunrise to get back to where i was meant to go

i should have let them block your number because a bittersweet self-concluding end would have been honey and sweet dreams compared to the ***** and panic attacks that i have started with this saturday morning
try and keep my name out of your mouth because my ears can’t handle the deafening ringing
catch me driving 90 on the highway waiting for my ribs to crack

a million words i could have texted you after almost 2 years of a deafening silence and all i could think to say was “**** i would like to see my black lipstick on your **** one last time”

4 years ago today i was riding the high of a first kiss 3 months in the making
we fell in love amidst curfews and open doors and a tendency to semi-slow dance between half truths and part lies

old obsessive habits are beginning to unearth themselves and it takes all of me not to scream at the moon or the sun for cursing me  
i didn't know it was possible to feel this way since him but i am already planning living room layouts and vacations and trying to guess your phone password and wondering if your old "roommate" you are still friends with ever took up the spot on your mattress that i now rest in one night a week
i'm worried if we change it to 2 nights a week you'll get tired of me faster

the thing is: i am never not worried and i can't figure out what that says about us or you or me

i haven't written since february because the noise keeps getting louder and it has gotten harder to pick the words out of the static
not that i would ever blame you, obvously

i showered until there were welts and i scrubbed my body until i bled but still the bruises remained and outlasted the sins of a wednesday night not quite forgotten but never forgiven
perhaps 2 beers too many and 2 phone calls too few
you know like i know that we were on borrowed time
i hope someday you find all my french fries and lost hair ties and think somewhat fondly of, if not me, the idea of who i used to be and could have been
maybe next time i will be able to stop history from repeating itself

let's talk about my self destructive tendencies over a nice glass of luke warm bud light
i don't think you deserved to meet my dog and i don't think i deserved any kindness after cheating on you so maybe we can call it even?
i'll send you a thank you card for the mediocre ****** that one time

i am taking a plane tomorrow
i will be 1,178.6 miles away from you and i hope i will feel safer
knowing exactly how far away we are from each other helps me to breathe a little easier
my mind is constantly focused on 212 and 222 and november 8th and 2015
i am hoping that new mileage will clear up some space
i am sorry for what happens next, "love"
this distance was a death sentence

oh my god she's in your kitchen in your parents house
does she know about the ghost of the cat that occupies the space in front of the oven?
does she know about the ghosts of us that roam the hall and the basement and your bedroom and the piano bench and the back porch and the shower and your driveway
god i don't miss the open doors but i would give anything to be alone with you in your parents house again
everything felt less real when you were two states and a train ride west of me
there's something about you being a potential 20 minute drive away that reminds me of my first suicide note
my second to last phone call from you was december 31, 2015 at 11:56 pm and i wish someone told me i would only see you again 2 more times following that
if only i had known that this would be the year i could swallow pills without any water maybe i would have kept my prescription