I remember when you were mine
Ha.

And I used to call you "sunshine"
Need I even explain why?
In clichés and metaphors?
Darling, you lit up my whole life

And now I take every chance
To call anyone I see
"sunshine, my only sunshine"
To cheapen out what it was you meant to me

Now I filter my own low light through anyone else
To disguise my ever present darkness
While you shine over anyone but me

And maybe I'll don dark glasses
To hide you from me and me from you
Baby, I'll dilute your natural shine
Or maybe I'll make you look into my eyes
And see just what it was your lightness did to me

Four years ago I started dying,
not of terminal illness nor poetic expression
about how we were all born to slowly die,
I died the first day of his last six months
and I died every single day for the next ten

This is four years later and Dad comes home
at 11:50 saying “She’s going to go tonight”
and I don’t cry
but I calmly allow myself to die a little more
and I glance at his own oxygen tank

At 11:55 we pull up to the home
and it is exactly what I expected:
oxygen masks and morphine
clinical and impersonal
next to her pale, familiar frame

And I kiss her softly and tell her I’m here
and she tries to open her eyes

This makes everyone exceedingly happy

The nurse shuffles in with explanations, condolences,
Make her comfortable's, There's nothing you can do's,
expecting heartbroken surprise
but the words are less than foreign
to this family they are home enough
familiar as an old dog’s bark
       all we can do is to hold her hand



Eventually we say our goodbyes
and I walk away waiting to feel eighteen
waiting to feel alive

Darling, the way I see it,
what makes you worth my while
is what makes me worth yours:
at one point in time,
we will have both have had a pulse

My dear, I know you don't want to hear it,
but we're all merely specks of something
in the only everything that ever was
And eventually,
                  Nothing

Then, love, I must inquire:
Why do we fear time lost,
when time is only given?

Why do we cling to moments far behind us,
like sweat-dripping polyester,
enveloping ourselves entirely
in the absence of what once was?

Won't you tell me,
my darling, my dear, my love:
What's the difference, in dust and us?
Isn't it all just oh-so-inconsequential?

But what's so bad about eventual nothings?

We can’t hold a moment in our hands
a tangible something
But we can simply hold hands
a beautiful nothing

Hold your assumptions
Do not surmise or deduct
That because you are not
The keeper of her affection
That she is heartless
She has a heart that beats
In the hand of another
And she holds his
Shaking but without hesitation
And they have stood like this
For the span of one year
Waiting to see which one of them
Would rip the other's out first

Hold me close, I'm a walking cliché
Flitting around in Converse sneakers
And that stupid old army jacket
Bet me $5 I could go for an hour
Without my lips uttering
"Consumerism, capitalism,
Elitist *****" -the usual *******
And I'll lose

Hold me close, I'm a stupid teenaged kid
Stomping around my room saying
"Can't they just listen for a change?"
And slamming doors to prove a point
And when I go to house parties
I'll sport my trusty skull shirt
Just so they know without a doubt
I'm different from them

Hold me close, I'm running around
Like a chicken with its head cut off
Running my mouth like a politician
And spewing my thoughts like a hippie
I'm a ****** hypocrite and it kills me
But I'll just lay awake at night and think
"How are they content with living this way?
Like hamsters in a wheel? Dogs in a cage?"
Then tomorrow I'll sit down
And reread the same old poems
To make me feel okay

Hold me close, I'm an idiot kid
and I just want to be someone

"Fight depression with chain smoking!" he says, half-joking
Fiddling with the lighter in his pocket
(He knows about her grandfather's lungs boxed up underground)

They will exchange the usual
Books, philosophical ambiguities and terrified uncertainties
Ideas of the unknown, which makes up more than the known

They will talk about how they would both rather die alone
Than surrounded by false pretense of love

Every night is an existential crisis, every other night one will feel strong
On the graveyard shift of saving the same life for the millionth time

I adore the phrase,
       "You're going places"

Yes, I am

Later I'm going to the supermarket
Because I'm running low on avocados

And after that
I might stop by Addy's house
To pick up my blue button down

Maybe I'll go to Turkey, Bali, Istanbul
Hit every gritty, run-down pub I find
You know, I'd love to go to Ireland someday

There are a few places, however,
I would like to avoid, as would anyone
Jail, divorce court, Wal-Mart on Boxing Day
Just to name a few

But I'm going places, yes I am
Who knows where, who knows when
One thing I'm certain is
Some day I'll go some place
And I'm never coming back

So between now and then
I'm going places
Anytime I can

You want me in your lustful way
You want me in my playful debate

But I wanted you to not just want me
     I wanted you to need me

You need me in the sense that I put up with the *******
You need me in the way that I can offer you retreat
You need me to calm your soul when it hurts to breathe

But you don't crave my soul so much

I wanted you to need me
But then I realized

     I never needed you