have you ever believed
in something so blindly
so genuinely
that the moment you realize
it isn't true, something inside you
changes forever?
i wanna tell you a story, see
seldom do i ever
go swimming in drinks
deep enough to drown in
but when i do
i speak in tongues
about things that none
of my memories
are allowed to talk about
like that christmas
at the isthmus
where my girlfriend
plucked a conch shell
whiter than gods teeth
out of the sand
held it to her ear
and stopped time
that day she was a shade of blue
the could've made the ocean sick
see, she loved to play jokes
when she held
the sea shell to her ear
she gasped, called my name
and said "i want you to hear this"
i said "yeah, right, everybody knows it's just the same old sea"
she replied "no. not this one. this one is special. listen. theres music in this one"
she handed me the shell
like a promise she couldn't keep
and i held it to my ear
with all the potential
of seeing shore
after being stranded
at sea for years
only to hear
a tired dirge of silence
spill from its emptiness
i guess she didn't know
how desperately
i wanted to hear it too
because ever since
something inside me snapped
now sand pours out
of every post card i open
i hear seagulls
in telephone static
sometimes i have dreams
where i bury my hands
in every beach
i've ever been on
and exhume this graveyard of noise
every time i try to sleep
i spit up fishhooks
and i guess i'm obsessed
but maybe
if i hold my ear
to enough vacant things
then i could have back
the time stolen from me
since it happened
maybe they would get it
if they knew what i wanted
when i blow out birthday candles
maybe they'll find me
face down in a wishing well
i watch eternal sunshine
of the spotless mind every day
pretending i can forget too
because this sea sickness
has followed me for years
because yesterday
i walked into a music shop
and all the pianos broke
but the only thing
i can think to say is
*do you know how bad
a memory has to be
that you fantasize
about forgetting it?

I have so many secrets under my tongue.
I want to tell you that when I say "I don't care" I really mean:
I care too much. I see the way your shoulders curve downwards when you're with that someone
else that isn't me and I see the way you make yourself smaller to try and fit inside some definition
of love. I want you to know that I want all of you, so much of you at one time that the doctors are scared
I'll overdose.
What I mean is, you were it. And you are it. And you are everything.
And if you don't know what I mean by this, I mean- look at the stars.
Look at the ground, look at your feet. Everytime I see you I wish for roots.
So I can't move. So I can dedicate my stillness to never letting you make yourself smaller for me.
I want to tell you that when I'm silent I mean:
I hope you're doing okay. I hope you stop losing people.
I hope everyone who gets to see your smile knows how lucky they are.
I hope your bed curves to your back everynight, appreciating the freckles.
I know the constellations are jealous of your alignment.
I want to tell you that when I look at you and look away I'm thinking about imminence again.
How one day we'll see eachother and it won't be too late and I'll say oh my god, you haven't changed a bit.
And we'll laugh because who the **** am I to make any sort of comparison?
I want to tell you that when I say "I don't care" I really mean:
I care so much it keeps me awake.
I really mean "I love you even when I'm sober"

It all comes down to this:
Praying to Osiris to find me again.
Turns out I'm pretty lost without him.

i have racked my mind
trying to figure this whole thing out
the staying, the going
the threads we claim hold us here
& the people who've stopped to play a tune on them
i sometimes relate it
to waking up in waist deep snow
in our former selves
the us we wish we could give one another
the children we've sat on the shelves
trapped, like the looks
we leave behind in snow globes
i sometimes imagine ships
dragging the bottom to the sea of "me"
for sleep & pieces of my old self
to sell to the new one
like history doesn't repeat itself
it gets me wondering
if you too want an apology from the rain
or if you dream of burning family photo albums
and wearing the ashes like perfume
if you're anything like me
how i hope god chokes
on memories of me blowing out candles as a child
i know i shouldn't reference my reader  
but don't you know, the only difference
between alone & lonely is you?
that if my hands could talk
the only thing they'd be able to say
is "dear god we've missed you"
and how can you tell me it isn't love
when even the rain refuses to fall
in places where i've kissed you
i remember the day
you found my smile at a yard sale
it reminds me of how you'll leave
i wonder if when you go
you'll tell yourself
the person in the rear view mirror
is closer than they appear

I hadn't cried in years.  
I was always taught that strength
was not having the courage to let yourself feel but
******* it up, holding it in.
I am sick of "You're going soft on us, honey"
Today I came to understand that
you are completely okay with writing the same poem
over and over again.
This is a metaphor for the way you ****** her in my bed.
This is a metaphor for the night you copy and pasted love letters.
This is a metaphor for what really happened-
I never fall in the same place twice.
Except when I do.
I think the critical difference between the two of us,
critical because there are many differences
but- I think our hamartia, our fatal flaw,
our end scene is this:
if people didn't like my poetry, if nobody listened,
if I walked out on stage and nobody snapped their
fingers, I would still write for just your eyes.
I would still cramp my crooked, birth defect,
quadruple jointed fingers writing to you about the nights
you loved me back,
for a minute there you loved me back.
And you loved 20,000 other people back.
And you loved small towns back and big cities back and the entire west coast
back when you drove through, making temporary homes out of people
who should have been permanent
and I loved you.
And I hadn't cried in years.
Not because I wasn't sad, but because I was taught that showing emotion
was weakness.
So if my father made me memorize the How To's of strength,
if I were going by the book, today I'd be so fragile
you could say hello and I'd shatter so suddenly you'd
forget you were the one that let go.

morrissey said "to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die" and donnie darko said "every living creature on earth dies alone"
and maybe we're thrusting ourselves ourselves into the unknown
but from what i know the birds tell us stories with their wings and the sky is a lot more beautiful than his hands ever were to me and the overgrowth in the woods holds more passion than my eyes do some nights
when we walk through this world, we are doing so alone

to die on your own is a way most people don't want to go.

we have shipwrecks in our hearts and thunderstorms under our fingernails and sometimes i swear to god i can hear the rain in your exhale and highways never come to a complete end so why should we

comatose linked to these tombstones and the way you never understood what her eyes were saying when her lips couldn't move
i keep thinking back to the sunday mornings i found god in and i see the exasperation staining my knees from all the pleas i was sending back to me

maybe we have to see our own blood on the pale white concrete before we can understand what love is or what the sunset really means and i guess i'm saying i lost so many parts of me that i mopped up the blood and rung it out into the veins of a creature you'll never meet

to die in the passengers seat of a car with your heart on your sleeve and their saliva still on your lips is the way most people want to give death it's first kiss

we are brooding through the wavelengths of familiarity and unfamiliarity all at once and we chant deja vu when we meet someone new because they say the last thing you see when you die is those you love so what do we do when we **** the things we once knew and love all things brand new

to die by my own side is such a heavenly way to say goodbye.