I'm 25 and still alive.
Until this day I thought I'd died,
but something else has kept me here.
I'd say it's her but I'd have lied.

I'm 25 to my surprise.
I can't escape my bleak demise,
but I can always run away.
I'd say to here but I'd have lied.

I'm 25 and in my mind
I've swam the seven seas of time.
I've climbed upon the rocks
that peak the trouble in my worried mind.

I'm 25, and my heart breaks.
I feed upon the pain and aches.
I take my sight and take my kind
and focus on another rhyme.

I wake up as you sleep, rise to the sun. See what it holds and then lay back down.
The devil’s gonna set me free.
So through the Mississippi stain, the Tennessee twang, I lay there with my eyes glued to the wall. The pale plaster, the beige boredom.
I’ve got no place to call home, all these chains lead to broken bones.
But in this bed I feel at home, a piece of my past here at last, for you to east your troubled mass.
I love you like the spiral on my notes, holding my pages together with certainty.
I love you like the *** whistles, alerting me that our insides are boiling over, seeping out onto a dark and dismal surface.
I love you like the dull picture piercing my eyelids, seeping in from the TV screen at the foot of the bed I’ve made, keeping me awake.
I will be your spiral, your twice-welded metal, your spewing colors.
I will be the covers that hold you when the fan wanes, when the temperature wavers, and the heat creeps in.
You can keep your mountain side, I will climb it.
And when I reach the peak, and the wind from your planet pushes my heels to the side,
I will cry your name once more.
I will push, and you will push me back. And when our whirlwinds meet the they will calm themselves, sending each other into the blue ocean, the emptiness swallowing our sorrow.
And we will sink to the bottom, the pressure of the waves breaking our heads, and the silent sand welcoming us home.
We will befriend the dead. and welcome the living, the coral and sponge, the bubbles and breath.

Frantically flailing in broken facades;
these trials have been torture. I'm stuck in my ways,
and while I sit here and wallow, these choices I've made
will all come back to haunt me one of these days.

Yes, one of these days I will see what I've done,
and make peace with the problems I've caused everyone.
I would scream from the mountains, fly into the sun,
just to shed from my shoulders this weight of a ton.

When I sleep, when I dream, it is all that I see.
When I wake, and I wander, my melancholy
seems to leak in these streets beneath feet proud and free
pulling those who would touch it down into the sea.

Yes, into the sea, and down with the ship.
I'm sinking, and downing, with each tiny drip
of my blood to the floor. This eternal torment,
beckons beauty and lyric from the purse of my lips.

Would you care to be me? If you really could choose,
would you be the same with the losses I lose?
It's a simple reminder that pairs come in twos,
and no matter the feeling, or what may ensue,
there is someone out there to start your life anew,

and no one is better off being you, than you.

Write now, I sit in silence. The words escape me.
Prisoners running from the search-light.
I flee with the rest, unknowingly burying my head
amongst the tree moss growing wild.
Wild I see the flame.
A burning of un-rational youth, a flame which keeps reaching for a new sun, a new day, a new life.
So what, if you face me with advance. I counter and repose.
Here is your last breath, here is your knowing.
Now watch it disappear.

It wasn't like I had never known this feeling.
I've got nothing, but you've got something that feels just, exactly right. This whole decision I understand is all up to me, but to me you were never anything more than a friend until then.
Do you have the answer for this? Is this just a way of breaking my heart?
I mean, I could hold my breath for hours if you'd hold it for me, but I just can't see you doing so. I'm just going to sink, and bubble.
And now the wind comes, and this delicate place becomes ruptured.
(This delicate place, shattered around misdeeds).
I was always on the outside looking in, but you never took the time to see,
this requiem of my dreams forgotten.
I'd love thee until my blood ran dry, my veins shriveled into dust, and the gray matter subsided into a dull blue.
I'd love you from the start, I would, but I was on the outside looking in
on the window panes, fogged from the dust from our mouths.  
This sentiment grows irritating.
My skin itching to be released.
Can you find me here? A nuance among ghosts.
Here I am. Calling for you. Hear me.
Will you?
My eternity.

On the third of November in '73, a stranger found his way to my door. He had traveled many miles: the shore out of site, his home but a distant memory. Through wheezing and tears, and a gleam in his eye, his shaking hand reached towards me gripping tightly to a letter.

"This… This is for you," he said still trying to catch his breath. "I'm so sorry, I read a line and knew it not my place," he continued, "please forgive me."

No envelope, no mailing address, no return. The smell of brine shot from the damp, yellow paper. Blue lines running towards black, water-colored ink. I reached towards him, without saying a word, and brought him inside for water. He had traveled far.

We sat down in the kitchen and I began to read:

"I have been away for what feels to be quite some time: admittedly I have lost track. My mind burns with strife. Should I just give up? Should I hold out hope? I try every day to remind myself the date. 'May 27th, 1965, is the day it began. September 16th is my birthday, and I am now 28. The current date is April 11th, 1971.' This is the date I am writing you this letter. I need you to know that I have not forgotten you. I have not let this existence strip you from me.

I still remember the way you held my hand so awkwardly in the grocery store. The way your smile, that time we drove to the Grand Canyon, made getting lost for two days worth while. We didn't even see the **** canyon, but that didn't matter. I remember the feeling I got deep in my stomach when I was on your arm. The way you were proud to show me off and the way I was proud to simply be in your light. I can taste the dinners you would cook me, and your breath at night, how it tasted like our favorite scotch. When I close my eyes, I hear your voice reading me passages from Tesla's diaries, because you knew it put me to sleep.

I can feel your warmth in this cold, desolate room, keeping me safe and watching over me. The sun breaks through a crack in the wall. I press my face against its rays and imagine them as your eyes, beaming down on me in the morning while I'm nuzzled on your shoulder.

I feed the birds crumbs of stale bread that fall off the rolls they bring me, and let their songs shower me with happiness.

I do not know where I am, but the thought of you has kept me strong. Please do not despair. I will always be with you. I will always be in your heart, as you are in mine. And I pray to whatever God is out there, that when this ordeal is over, I can watch as you live out your days in our home. My love, I need this letter to find you. Maybe the bird has heard my plea.

I will wait for you on the other side of this life. For I know I have many more with you.

Yours always, never failing;
Lenore."

It had been over eight years since I last saw my wife. We had stopped for gas ten miles outside Carlsbad. She had gone in to get cigarettes and a 40oz grape slushy (her favorite). And I...I had taken my eyes off of her for simply a few seconds to check the nozzle and…

I began to weep uncontrollably. For years I knew she was still alive, I knew when no one else would believe. I felt her holding on. I too, looked at the sun and felt as though she was looking down at me. My dreams were ransacked with memories of that failed Canyon trip, yet every morning I awoke with the largest smile on my face, simply from remembering her.

The feeling went away in the summer of last year, just months after she had apparently written me. My tears mixed with the paper, causing the ink to run even more, creating a gray blend where my tears, the ocean, and her love collided.

The stranger made his way to the bar-cart and grabbed the scotch. He poured me a double and made himself a water while I thanked this kind stranger profusely for allowing me such closure.

He had not spoken as I read. He had not spoken as I wept. He simply offered his hand on my shoulder for comfort, and a glass of scotch for remembrance.

As I took another sip from my glass my vision fogged and the room it span. This stranger I had thought so kind was standing behind me with both hands now on my shoulder, pressing down hard. Through my tears and confusion I managed to question:

"What did you do to her? What did you do with my Lenore? How did you find me? What is…" Every word growing weaker and weaker with age. And through the haze I heard him whisper, his voice different than before,

"A little birdie told me…"

And I was out. Never would I see this stranger again. My wife's last words now rest heavy on my chest. She was away, but never far. Her captor was here, but far away.

He never gave her a choice, but I have mine. And I choose to go silently into the ocean's wake, eyes wide at the stars, until I slowly drift under. I will see you again.

There's something you don't know about me. Something I'd never show. It's deep, it burns with no relief, in grief and strife below.  I'd let you walk all over me. I'd let you in the throes. If you didn't only love a man for what he didn't know.

With slender smiles you boast of me. And how I treat you right. But every night, from dusk 'til dawn, you wonder from my sight. I'd love to know just where you go. Or who'm it is you see. But I feel as though i'm just a part of the man I used to be.

I stress, and wait. Oblige in silence. Pick until my fingers bare. For you to come and set me true, to show me that you care. Just one word of honesty, just one statement fair. If I cannot abide your "love", then real love must be rare.

You came, you said you loved, you left; a tale as old as time. If I ever said I loved, I meant it. Your love a blatant lie.

No one can pain as much as you, not one can hold your due. But now I've found a love to love, a woman truly true.

A woman so outside herself, an angel by her grace.
To come and take me in her arms, and lead me from this place.
You strung me by, you left yet said I'd always be your man.
You thought I'd break, but now I'm living life with your best friend.