i'm so in love with the idea of you in my head it's driving me insane.

Imagine a treadmill
for your brain.
That never stops
speeding up.
Slowly, at first,
you savor each step.
But boredom pushes you
faster and faster.
No longer tasting.
Only inhaling
the adrenaline.
Because unless you find the next page,
the next post,
the next video,
you risk facing
the combined gravity
of reality
converging upon a single point
of agony.
And so you scroll.
To keep stress away,
the roaring anxiety at bay.

I tried to get
a library card
tonight.

For a bit of back story
(not that anyone
asked for it)
I had a tough
few
years.

And I moved away
and then back
and then away
and then back
and then away
again
and then
back
and that's
where I am.

So tonight
I tried to get
a library card.

They told me
to bring along
a letter, addressed
to my current address,
and my identification
card.

So I did.

I brought along a letter,
addressed to me,
from The Community College
of Philadelphia,
letting me know
I was admitted to their
honors program
based on my grades.

(I had taken the letter off the wall,
where my little brother
hung it up,
because all of the other siblings
had achievements hanging
on the fridge,
and he didn't want me
to feel
left out.)

So I went to the library,
with my honors letter
from The Community College
of Philadelphia,
and I asked them
for a Library Card.

They glanced at
the letter,
and said
nothing.

And they didn't even ask
for my identification card
(which would have had a different
address, a way to indicate
I didn't live my whole life
in a bubble
in one house
on one street).

And they entered my name
into the system.

And it turns out,
I'm still there,
in the system.

And I owe
Twenty One Dollars,
owed from
Two Thousand Eleven.



And then I left
and I went to a bar
and I drank.

Because if the public library
of the suburbs of Philadelphia
can't forgive me
for my sins,
why should I?

A brand new record.
Bright, self-renewed novelty.
Spin you paper thin.

The metal in this brass knuckle heart
punches my chest from the inside out

The valves, a semiconductor for the static
electricity of your touch

Who ever thought a defibrillator could be so soft?

And in the challenge of this love
I wonder what kind of mettle you're thinking
of now

And I think patience is found
on a molecular level inside the iron
in your blood

And love then, a stone ground down
from your ashes

I mean, pressure and heat are
what diamonds are made from

Tell me again of the struggles you shone through

And through that logic, we are precious stones
but so much softer than that

I want to hold you like the focused light
from a jeweler trying to make a sale
but so much more earnest than that

And what of the contradiction
between hardness
and softness

Because there is you

How can you be so hard
and so full of life?

How can you be so beautiful?

That moment in summertime
when, for no good reason,
you feel inclined to jump in the swimming pool

Your
new shoes
expensive watch
and dry clothes
don't matter anymore

You wish to
ruin everything
for a moment's bliss

                *that is me and you

Swearing like a sailor couldn't keep my ship from sinking

Time does not exist
Or so I am told
An artificial instrument
created by man
As it turns
the Earth shrugs it's shoulders
She doesn't know what to think either

Time is not linear
That is what I hear
Everything has already happened
and is happening at the same time

So...wait.

I imagine it like one gigantic explosion
Our lives play out
Everything happens separately and at once
My ten year old self and my eighty year old self are one in the same
I have heard that

There are some people I wish I could talk to again
The ten year old smiles and continues the conversation
I sit here and think that if everything has happened and is happening all at the same time

Then

I am still having those conversations
with Living Ghosts