It's 1:45 am

I am listening to the ocean inside your chest.

Your shoreline fills my ears with white noise and reminds me I'm not alone inisde the sleeplessness of my bedroom walls.

I've never heard lungs fill so effortlessly with waves of wet Georgia air.

Every exhale is an excited sigh. An introvert, greeting a common acquaintance.

Sometimes, you swim against the current, end up drowning in the abundance of oxygen, and the rip tides role in.

I stopped playing lifeguard
because your inhaler is always close by.

From my ashes will grow, a city of Weeping Willows.

There are so many reasons to leave.

Tar sits on my lungs like a winter coat.

Philadelphia is colder than your shoulders.

You tell me to stop smoking.

I’d run out naked in a snowstorm just to feel your goosebumps against mine.

I don’t know how to tell you

I'm looking for a reason to stay.

Do you still think about me
when your car hums
past the baseball field
and beats toward the twilight?

Can you hear my smile
when the sun is melting into your favorite
flavor of summertime sorbet?

-

I remember when
we used to summit the dugout
and watch the sky slow dance,

we held hands like our fingers
were sewn together,

and kissed in celebration
like we had reached
the peak of the world.

You taught me how to
write poems about love,
and my open chest cavity.

Since you left, I’ve been writing
about everything all at once.

About how the smoothness of your skin
brushes me awake in a bed in which I am alone,
how love tastes like jazz music
and fireball whiskey,
and about how pain leaves you gasping for air and
draws canyons under your eyes.

-

I don’t know how to forget
the palms of your hands
in my mom’s basement at 2 a.m.
or the sound of my heart as
I hung up the phone.

I don’t know how to forget
everything all at once.

My heart is a sinking ship.

It is taking painfully too long for the ocean to swallow.

I'm on the brink of 2 a.m.

It's a sticky-sweet July night,
and even though you're not here
I'm surrounded by you.

I had this dream we got lost in an arcade,
and decided to never leave.

I don't know what love is,
but I do know that your clothes
fit me better than my own.

I want to write about you...
but it's hard to fit the entire universe in a poem.

I can try,
we can try.