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-e- May 2023
We left pages unwritten, just stretched out into the nights we have yet to remember someday
just letting the light hit us long enough
To see that we are people,
maybe what we were wearing
Swearing to be more than what the headlights let us be
Did we let them down?
Our less broken younger selves?
Caught warming our hands in the red of the brake lights
I'm sorry we don’t laugh, kiss and bleed as much as we did
But the songs we couldn’t stream,
Binders full of rainbow CDs
marked with sharpie
They still flow through me
Like the half remembered dreams
Of parking lots and back seats
Conversations that used to mean something
Back when we were allowed to love people because we loved people
Not because we were afraid of what you’d think
Maybe this is how its supposed to seem
What does a sad kid grow up to be?
Did I fill the canvas shoes and broken laces
Am I just burning out overrated?
Optimistic with my “punk”tuation
Less learned and more “edge”ucated
Fences I thought I’d climbed over
They built taller
I always knew I could be a better man
But I just wasn't
I liked the way I am
And so did my friends
That used to count for something
I thought getting older I’d finally know
But I’m more lost than I have ever been
Care more, worry less?
What does a sad kid grow up to be?
Me, I guess.
-e- Oct 2021
I cut my lungs on the night air
And breathed you in, wondering what you’d think
Of the sad songs living in my head
All the somber things I haven’t written yet

Pessimistic optimist, my hope isn’t quite dead yet
Despite the ***** shovel, nails and casket
Midnight prayers find their way
Slithering past my teeth
Whispered, breath to hide underneath
As honest as ill ever be
Unsure if there is anything for it to mean

Death cab on repeat
Its been stuck in the car stereo for weeks
Don’t think I’d take it out if I could
It’s finally starting to sound like me

Smile and kiss beneath streetlights
Parking lot conversations give my anxiety chase
Following the fog our laughter makes
Trying to fill the silence before my inevitability
Crashes back in our way
And I remember that you’re leaving
And I still have to stay

Death cab on repeat
Been stuck in the car stereo for weeks
Just like me
-e
-e- May 2018
Somewhere in my memory there is a smile
One that has to hurt cheeks, one that barley fits a face
Somewhere in my memory there is a dirt road
And there is you
just ahead of me, you, looking back
You are wearing it with the streaming sunlight
Dazzling, moving in slow motion, my memory,
Gliding looking back at me smiling
And I can feel it, the tension of my own cheeks
The pull the of the moment
That somewhere in my memory I go to
when someone says your name
Like a small second long movie clip
Projected in front of me
While it folds into reality
The edges yellowing in the blue sky
And gravel road, the bubbling of the scene
Like a film roll burning mid show
Shaking me back to whatever in the present
Demands my attention

Somewhere in my memory there are fast food wrappers on the dash
They are faded and forgotten, sun bleached
Somewhere in my memory there is you cradled in the passenger seat
Leaned back, sipping on a slur-*** cup
Laughing at joke I cant remember

Somewhere in my memory the parking lot lights
Are only stars we were gonna get that night
Somewhere it starts to rain
I smell it through the open window pane
Thick and filled with nostalgia
The way every moment I have with you ever was

Somewhere in my memory you are crying, folding in on yourself
Knees to chest head buried,
somewhere I am sorry
Somewhere back there deep there are things I cant change
Somewhere in my memory, I'd like too

Somewhere in my memory I am posing cliff side
Crooked smiled and sun burnt, somewhere you have that camera
Pushed to your face concentration hidden beneath
Lens adjusting hands, lip bit and beautiful
Somewhere we ask for someone to take one of both us
Where it hangs not just in my memory but on our wall

Somewhere in my memory there was a time when you are not
Somewhere there are good memories that are missing you
And although I wish you could have been its not the truth
But From now on I wont have too

Somewhere in my memory there will be this moment
Me, wide eyed breathless and hanging on it
You beautiful and smiling through it

-e
-e- Nov 2015
Did you notice how it pulled tight and twisted in?
The way the flesh smoothed out
Porcelain across my cheeks
My lips pinned back
Did my intentions slip past my teeth?
How could I waste words
Mince them with fate?
When the story of my self
Sells itself across my face?
My young dead man's smile
There is little left to say
Buried light in my eyes
Dark dirt on open graves
Ivory tombstone teeth
Crooked and confident
That they have enough weight
To keep the soul buried
Keep the dead parts in place
The funeral fiction mural
The lonely smile I have come to fake
It's just the mask
I chose to wear today.
-e- Nov 2013
They never said it would be like this
All these second guesses
All these missing pieces
Asking “Did our heroes every think twice?
When did saving our own lives become so inconvenient?”

Nobody ever told me that I could count my dead friends
By the cigarettes still left in the carton
And that alcohol doesn't clean cuts
Under my skin like it does on the surface

Everybody was silent

When I asked about paying rent
And sink or swim
I just never thought my heavy heart
Could ever drowned my friends
And I'm not any less sad
About the things I cant change
Or all the girls that I have kissed

Nobody told me it would hurt so much to love your friends
And how complicated my wicked heart gets
Or just how selfish it is
To never want to lose it

-e

— The End —