I was walking toward our old room.
I knew you weren't there;
I just wanted to feel something --
Something ephemeral and faint,
Tinged with nostalgia and sweat.

I couldn't turn the ****.
I heard every word
That we once shared
Blare into my ears:
"Are we meaningless?"
You once asked me.
"I'd still love you"
I said.

I forced myself into the room,
Everything pristine and clean,
But completely lacking you.
So I went to our bed,
Where we shared ourselves
With one another.

I could hear your voice
Whispering lines from our favorite songs,
And I could feel your skin
Falling into me.
I never wanted to leave.

Then, I heard your death,
Lurching and shaking in the bed.
All alone with no one to hold,
Or to hold you,
And where was I?

So I closed the door,
Away from the horrible noise
Haunting my mind,
And manifesting in our bed.
I just wish you were still with me
So we could walk into the morning fog,
And watch the mist glow at sunrise
Together.

Out there somewhere among the waves,
I feel you crawling in my brain,
Pleading to be more than just a memory;
Some old, forgotten name.

I locked you up away from everything,
In the recesses of my mind,
Where I thought none would ever find.
But you wouldn't rest;
You wouldn't die.

Now here I am, face down upon the shore,
Screaming to the curling waves for the woman I adored.
But you are gone forever,
You are buried and rusted somewhere,
Yet in every star I see your shining eyes.

Maybe a tide will sweep me away,
Deep down to the bottom of the sea,
And there I will find you,
Locked away waiting for me,
So we can then finally hold hands,
Until our bones sink into the sand,
Far below the curling waves.

I don't need you anymore.
I have forgotten about the nights
Where we tumbled to the floor,
And whispered like lovers
Beneath dampened covers.

I endured frigid centuries
At the bottom of that old black sea
That I dug out of your skin.
In those depths I searched for you,
But you were on the coast, looking in.

It was around a card game at Devon's,
Amidst nonchalant laughs,
And burnt coffee, that I learned
That I do not care about you anymore;
That you are an old, forgotten name.

And I keep having this stupid dream
Of you sitting next to me
In my passenger seat
Where you whisper "I don't love you"
Then I stop the car.

So I'll drive home tomorrow
And I won't text you when I'm lonely.
I'll swallow the glorious isolation,
And I'll greet the rising sun.
When I visit town again, you won't know.

An overcast sky poured upon the earth
Today. It seemed like it would never stop,
Then it did, and the city was flooded:
A shallow sea of silent standing water .

So I made three paper boats, and
Walked to the new ocean with them,
And cast them from my withered hands
To sail into oblivion.

I watched them glide down the glistening streets
Ever away from me, then I thought of you –
How we would cross the oceans together,
Where I learned how to swim, and how to love.

Then the last of the paper boats had gone –
Down wind, on some futile little journey.
I imagined you at the helm of one,
And I at the bow, looking back at you.

I awoke to rain on my second floor window;
An overcast sky and tossing trees,
Glimmering leaves above tar-black streets.
I opened the window
And felt the light breeze against me.
I watched the droplets fall on my hand.
Splattering carelessly:
A downpour of tiny suicides.
So I closed the window,
And I took a cold shower,
And as the water poured onto my head
I stared down at the drain
Wondering,
How it would feel to clean this broken skin,
And fall away
Into oblivion,
Only to be reborn
Falling from the sky.

I set sail long ago, and I took down the mast. The wind would blow, but only past. I rode nothing but the waves of the ocean – stars above and a setting sun to love. The nights shine with a sky so bright, as the earth turns, and I drift toward a fading horizon’s light. Where this ocean will take me, I do not know, but wherever it may be, I will find a home.

The sky was blue then, and in these days there was no ocean all around. No, there were children, a wife, and a home. There was a life of comfort and care and a vast land to roam. We had made for ourselves a life together, with nothing but a desire to share this forever.

A few years thereafter, the sky was burning. I came home to find the love of my life laid at my feet with her body limp and bloodied hair. My children were a motionless mass against a wall – None of them breathing… Not one at all.

So I left. I went to the coast, where calm waves crashed. There the sea beckoned for me. I had been so lost, and here was my salvation. “Unto oblivion” it spoke to me, “and into eternity.”