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 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

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

there are 2 gigabytes on my phone of voicemails and 99% are from you and i wonder if our inboxes mirror each other or if you deleted the ones i used to send you
i thought i would have a lifetime of "goodnight and i love you"s
now all i am left with is a slow phone and the inability to call anyone

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”

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

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 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

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

originality is dead and i killed all the artists
i thought my words were my own but i am getting pretty tired of dollar store versions of my own suffering
imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but what am i supposed to do when i can't differentiate between sincerity and someone who is going to spit my words back in my face

if i read/write one more ******* poem about bed sheets i am going to hang myself with mine

i guess it makes sense that one of our favorite bands would break up because everything we ever touched turned to dust in our hands

why can't i bury you like you must have buried me?

didn't you know we were supposed to burn the city to the ground?

i've had almost 2 years of radio silence and i can't tell if i just can't hear the music anymore

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

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 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?

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

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

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 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

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?

someone should tell the world to stop ******* turning because i didn't sign up for a lifetime of being left behind

can you believe i am still waiting for us to come full-circle?

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?

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

i need a phone call
i need a rain coat

i stay up most nights these days wondering if you would be proud of me
maybe we needed to fall apart so i could put myself back together and be whole without the pieces i thought were always meant to fit

i wonder if your mom is proud of you
i wonder if she wishes i could have made you stay and i wonder if she knows i miss her
why did you drop out of college?
did you forget how to put yourself back together?
are you happy where you're sleeping?
do you ask yourself similar questions about me?
i wonder if the new versions of us would fall in love just as easily
and for all it's worth
i hope you know you can be so much better and do so much more and you were always meant to travel through space and time and i don't think i want to wait for you anymore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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”

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

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

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

****

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”

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