I'm left open and sagging
Resting raw against the the thump of your clean living heart
Still reeling I can't move up or down or left or right
Stuck in a bottomless purgatory that just seems to become more grey
Each of your eyelashes etched into my palms
Every stretch of skin looped like a thread into my memory
Clogging my mind until I'm trapped in your image
I sink into the pollution of your shadow
I can't swim to cleaner tides.

Drugstore trips for constant drips
we pull up to your parents driveway
and hesitate to leave;
Idle cars for idle minds
on where I'll be sleeping in a year.

"You have old eyes
Eyes older than twenty two, simply based upon
the depth of those crow's feet criss crossed around your eyes;"
You old alien soul, how you found me I'll never know

i hear the phone ring when
it doesn't, the door open
when it's locked, the
light switch flip when
it's off and i turn around and
look for you
still

your arms
wrapped around me
were replaced
by loneliness.

i feel now that i am not wanted,
but rather here,
a disturbance in the calmness
of your peaceful atmosphere.

my passions
have become your annoyances,
every word i speak
makes your eyes roll.

i've started to wonder
if it's you or i that's changed.

i feel like winter,
cold and unwanted;
sometimes like spring,
tremendous rainfall
on flowers that will never bloom.

i don't feel close to anyone anymore,
i feel like a quiet noise amongst ambience,
waiting to be heard.
but not everybody can hear.

how many times do i have to try
before you realize
you don't want me?
why am i teaching you a lesson
when you so badly
believe you're teaching me one?

and lastly,
who are you?
is it you that's changed?

you used to love me.
you used to take me as i was.
you used to treat me like summer mornings.
you used to be happy around me.
you used to appreciate everything.

you used to.
but now you don't.

and as spring turns to summer
and the flowers die out,
i hope you dwell on the buds
that never blossomed
for after all,
it is your ignorance
and my loneliness
that kills all life.

Listen, my son: the silence.
It's a rolling silence,
a silence
where valleys and echoes slip,
and it bends foreheads
down toward the ground.