When I walk down Shop Street
I shake my ***.
(Yeah, I do.)

I swagger
With the confidence
That yes
I am a foreigner
In your country
And yeah I say,
You’re alright.
But I
Am a newly awakened goddess.

And it took being heartbroken
And being drunk five nights  out of seven
And feeling like the water is going over my head
To say WAIT.
I am more than this.

And when you look at me
It won’t be because my *** is shaking
(although, that certainly helps)
It will be because
I EXUDE GREATNESS.
And you will want to know me.

I’ll be nodding my head from side to side
And shaking my hips like it is my God-given right
(it is)
And Instead of telling you how awesome you are
I’ll be telling myself.
Because that is the one person
whose been neglected from this equation
from the start.

When I ask
DO YOU THINK OF ME?
I’ll be asking myself.

And I’ll be replying  a wholehearted “YES”
As I shake my ***
Walking down Shop Street.

Ella Fitz’s rendition of Dream a Little Dream for the umpteenth time.
Louie comes in tune with that righteous horn.
I drink more as I sing along, off key.

There could be an entire SECTION of books written about us.
How we fell into that great whirlwind.
How we learned to hate the world when we didn’t have each other.
How we re-kindled, for that brief, brief time.
How I thought maybe we could love again.

We had hours that turned to days that turned to months.
We were the perfect piece of short fiction
An art form so gloriously undervalued,
(by both the audience and the creators)
Until we found ourselves in the Middle
(the worst feeling in the world.
Because like purgatory or super glue:
you're stuck.)

We said goodbye.
And I found I had residual emptiness.
I became residual emptiness.

I loved again, but it wasn’t anything
Like the masterpiece we had.
I knew because
Every day with him felt real.
Every day with you
Was a dream.
Something rooted in intangibility
Something I was astonished to find
happening to me.

It happened again-
We found ourselves in the same place
At the same time.
And after just a few weeks,
You gave me the greatest gift:
The indignity of silence.
And you gave me it
For the most ignoble reason—
You’re afraid.

Honey bun,
We’re all afraid.

It made me think
That maybe  the story of you and I
can only have a happy ending
in a place where it’s not so scary.

So me, Louie and Ella all ask you,
That
In your dreams
Whatever they be
Dream a little dream of me.

[Because that's the only place you'll find me now.]

Inhale. Hold. Submerge.
This is all the grandest illusion
that’s one disappointment away from shattering.
Take a deep breath
feel the pain in your chest.

Every night
I drown in a wine glass
Dive off the ledge with such fever and ferocity,
The splash of a cannonball--
No high marks from the judges.

When you look at me,
I know now it’s irreverent.
We are a lie.
In the deep end, where I can’t touch anymore.

Time to wash away this sin
Hurt doesn't go,
It just lingers
Like our ghosts, lurking behind closed doors.
I can’t be rid of you
Because I don’t want to be.
Go on,
Haunt me until the end.

But I know
You cannot swim
so for now,
I'll sink further and further
into wine so dark
I disappear.

I came to you because I thought you would save me.
You laughed over the John Hughes quote
That now is a seminal classic
But I’m not sure because I don’t believe in it
Because I’ve never known it
or maybe it’s just you I don’t believe in.

I didn't have enough energy to actually make an effort to laugh
and pretend I was having a good time.
I would rather sink into you, slowly, like I would ((in a shipwreck or)) in oversized couch cushions.
and be usurped by ((cold water that wakes you up)) musty fabric
when it swallows us whole
and we sink to the bottom.
I'd only feel
your long arms around me and nothing else

I’d rather strip for you
Not to be naked but to take my layers off.
[You bore me, You shaped me, You taught me]

And then I’d try to not love you so that I could fall into you once more.
let the  overwhelming overwhelm me (again)
until I forget the ongoing drama of the heart and the heart (a purposely neverending story)
[There are no words with which to describe thee:
My darling my love I need you beside me.]

we quote our favorite title page to our favorite epilogue.
An absurd story about love and blowing things up
Because really, (like hospitals and prisons)
it’s the same thing.

what does this night mean in the greater consequence of our lives?
Nothing.
I’m okay with that.
I’m just saying that.
[?]

Opportunity and random occurrence are just a farce
That we use to pretend fate doesn’t exist;
(it doesn’t, does it?)
Everything that matters seems too big to be real.
but I lived long before this, and I will exist ever after
one day I will achieve greatness
you will be forced to know me then
Since you won’t nor never will now.

They came again last night.
The demons.
They morph into everything
We’ve ever been afraid of
And everything
We still are.
The ones that haunt and scream and wail
Until we listen to them.
And hear
Our faults
And remember
Our fears
Until everything gets cold and numb.
And no matter how many people are around,
We still know
We’re hopelessly alone.

Ghastly beings, those demons.
They haunt the halls of our subconscious;
They guard the doors
With the keys still in the locks
Covered with cobwebs
Because we dare not venture
Those again.
And every once in a while
Those demons come back
At one or two or three a.m.
To remind us
Those doors
Are still there.

Sometimes, I’ll open with the King’s Gambit
Because I’m feeling bold
Or saucy
Or generally suicidal
Since I know you’ll just countergambit.

I’ll move my pawn and you’ll move yours.
I’ll take your rook
With a sly move you never saw coming
Only to wave goodbye
To that brave knight of mine
Who gave his life
For my ongoing crusade
To capture you.

Move after move
Feeling victory in a capture
And dejection at a loss
Until we’ve suddenly found
We’ve been playing this game
For years.

I’ll give a little bit
And let you take something
That belongs to me.
And you’ll rejoice and be glad
For the whole world to see.

But darling?
Don’t you know
The number one rule of this game?
You always have to be
One move ahead.

Checkmate, *******.

I would like
for you
to for once
in your life
get angry.
I broke you;
made you
into the so many
pieces
of the man
I used to know
you to be.

I would like
for me
to stop believing
in fairy tales
because I know
first-hand
there is no
happy ending
but I still
dream
about them
anyways.

I would like
for you
to break my heart
(again)
so that
this current state
of self-loathing
would make
some sort
of sense.

I think
I hate myself
more
for ruining you
than I hate you
for ruining me.