The youth are scratching up their throats
with paper & tobacco smokes.

Pinpricking holes in the fleshy, lonely parts
of their abandoned souls.

Rolling nature into little papers and trying
to slow the pleasure.

Drowning their sorrows in sickly sweets borrowed
from their parents' liquor cabinets.

Candy pills and paper squares dissolving,
highlighting the bright, evolving.

We came of age, we trade in our dreams for smoke, bottles, powder, needles, hallucinations, vibrations and green.

We saw others crumble, dead or alive, it spit all of us out eventually.

For those who lived, it's sad to see our fallen brethren as we walk towards adult mediocrity.

if i could go back
one day and be the
person I am now, I
would choose that
day on the beach
at the end when
you told me
don't you
see that there
is still something
between us?
that hour echos
in this town where
there is no place to
echo---you are the
most resilient memory
I have.

the quietness of content
between two people
walking down the sidewalk
after splitting a pint and a crepe
is something new to me

the quietness of unsettled
emptiness in the dregs
of heaving lungs in a public toilet
is familiarly foreign
and suddenly unwanted

i occupy booth seats
instead of the space between
two metal dividers
and a toilet paper dispenser

i study the dimples of your cheeks
and the scent of your hair
i've become a student
learning the feeling of having
instead of a teacher of wanting

i do not see any crookedness
to your teeth or my own
i taste lager and nutella
strawberries on your breath
and don't ask
what else?
no sign of do not disturb
in my eyes
only, please continue
speaking

when i sway to the counter
and ask for the check
i am surprised by our obvious pleasure
when the waitress giggles
"oh i'm sorry,
i didn't want to disturb you"
i didn't realize we looked so happy
so together in a moment
shared over candles and two forks
on a coffee shop table

i admit it was
effortless

i see now that
food, love, humans
the things i made complicated
were

effortless

your love is too tainted
[by the memory of a boy
who will never be more
than a memory]
to give anybody else.

i don't need photos to
remember you;
you are burned
onto my
heart

Sometimes I write about you
But don't think too highly of yourself
You're just a book that's gathered dust
On the very highest shelf
Nothing is paid attention to
All the way at the top
It's neglected and ignored
Not important, I almost forgot
The space you take up
In the back of my mind
Is deteriorating by the second
You'll disappear with time
Sometimes I write about you
But it doesn't mean jack
I didn't lose you
You were something I never had
And you never had me either