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

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

****

he called me less and less and less and less until i couldn't remember the sound of static over the phone
2. my bed stretched bigger and bigger until i swear my whole house was just space that he wasn't in anymore and meanwhile he was looking for someone else to take up the lonely space between his sheets
3. "abandonment issues" had become more of a personality trait than i anticipated
4. people began tip-toeing around me, like i was glass on the edge of a coffee table teasing the world with the possibility of my shards cutting everyone and everything around me
5. i stopped singing while washing the dishes
6. i stopped running while crossing the street
7. my future was no longer a glowing exit sign on a highway off ramp and instead became the vastness that is inside my own head
8. i started remembering who i was before him and now that i'm in the aftermath of the natural disaster that was "us", i have the realization every day that i deserved more

i deserved so much ******* better

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

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

i hate your tattoos and the red hot chili peppers and the word "forever" never tasted so good until you kissed it into my mouth but i hate that taste now and no amount of alcohol or antidepressants can make it go away and my parents are worried about me but i'm worried about you even though i shouldn't be so i write these phrases that should form coherent thoughts but none of the words seem to line up and i'm not going to help you get through this because i have been where you stand and the power doesn't get to be yours anymore

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

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

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

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

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

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”

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

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

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 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

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'm jealous of the people that now get to know you and wonder if they will ever take it for granted like i never did

i hope your band never gets famous
i hope your next girlfriend will hate me
i hope you hate christmas because of that song i wrote
i hope that someone hurts you like you hurt me
i hope she finds those polaroids from when you still loved me
i really hope you fail out of school and have to move back home so you can be stuck in the place you hate the most
i hope that i never finish adding to this list

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

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

thanks for letting me borrow your netflix account so that i had something to do with my hours of you not calling me

i just think it's kind of funny how you were capable of spending so much money on tattoos yet you were unable to afford the train home to see me
i'm not one to harp on cliches about your lack of commitment to me but really how the **** did you rationalize that?
we're coming up on the year mark of that phone call that sent me back to therapy and into my mothers arms and it's quite honestly always been all your fault

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

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

Dear ****** ***,

hey so yeah i'm writing this on our 1 yr anniversary because it'll be cool to see what i felt about you a year ago and stuff. so, i guess here's a letter to future us!! maybe we will close the gap of 212 miles and we'll have rats and they'll be named bean and peach. we can finish our doughnut tour of philly and wake up every morning to blanket forts and special k and i will be your sun every day. all i know is that now i can't imagine a future without you in it. thanks for 2 great years and i can't wait to write you a card for infinity.

love always or whatever
-danny

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

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

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

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

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

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”

i would like to point out that it's pretty ****** up that you covered her favorite song on valentine's day while we were still together
and you crooned about someone not calling you
why didn't you call me?
maybe your phone lines were too ******* in her for you to even be able to say goodnight

i hope you never told anyone the way i cried during *** that one time i was ******* in your dorm room
i didn't know i could look so beautiful with nothing on my body until you showed me that polaroid
i have since ripped it up because the people we were in that picture were never meant to weather the storm that was 212 miles of highways and backroads and the ******* distance between us  

we listened to a playlist that we didn't make
we were actors in a scene that we never should have set
staring at the broken mirror in your bedroom showed me only fractals of myself and i could see exactly the versions of me that you would leave behind

it's been almost two years but
do you still think about me when you get high in your bedroom?
do you ever think about that night?

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

i will never be able to find solace in substance the way you helped yourself cope with the loss of us long before you had your feet out the door
there is no possible articulation that i can find myself capable of that would make you understand what it is like to lose you
i was stuck in an infinite loop of the same words over and over again telling me that i could have done something, that it was all my fault, and that my love was not enough
my love was more than enough!!

i'm in a long-term relationship with my depression
and she's a ******* jealous *****
i'm sorry that sometimes three's a crowd but she is the one constant in my life and i'm terrified of the sadness ending because then who am i?

"my heart is the vacant lot at the end of your street that is full of garbage and broken glass" and other cliches that people should stop writing about
what is my capacity of my ability to love?
is it possible that i was so full of it that now i am my own metaphorical sinkhole?

hope everything is ok with you on your side of this map that you have made for us
"voicemailbox is full"
"text not delivered"
i don't know how else i can tell you that everything is not fine with me
and i haven't slept in weeks
and the sight of your pictures don't make me smile anymore
and i've already started readying my battleships for the nuclear fallout that i can tell is inevitable
and your side of the map is no longer familiar territory
it's overgrown and the walls you've built are bulletproof
when did our peace treaty become null and void, love?
at what point did you decide that your side of the map didn't need our alliance?

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

sorry that i stained your pillowcase with tears over someone who left me farther behind than his old bedroom and his mom and his cats and his backyard and his kitchen floor where our conversations could have meant something

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

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

go ahead and make complaints about the texts you aren't getting back but remember that i endured months of a screaming silence that hurt my ears and rendered me a walking empty body
sorry that i couldn't be enough for a family that set me up to fail the second i stepped in the door
he's bringing her places we used to go and it's to overwrite the data already deeply encoded
i'm sure that our footprints and traces of who we were are still everywhere we ever went because time with him was on a different continuum and they shouldn't be trying to upset the balance

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