In the mythology we will one day weave of our lives, every night is either fable or cautionary tale
We trade stories of war across tables separated only by black coffee and the depth of understanding,
In a Waffle House in Florence, or in Clifton, or off the last exit we can bear to see because we can no longer take the motion and need a moment to rest, to breathe,
We talk, as if we are each others children, starry eyed and open mouthed to let all the possibilities sit on our tongues, wait, and then dissolve into dreams,
We all have different definitions of what it means to fight, but we appreciate others scars once they are made visible,
Like the night they took Jake to the psych ward, his heart a scientist burning  hypotheses in the street while Jess wiped tears and ashes from her face and resolved to battle this thing to the death,
Or the early morning we drove Sierra to Indianapolis, and we turned the radio in the old jeep up as loud as the one blown speaker would allow and tried to sing our way out from under the burden we carried to that dying city,
Or the night Jennifer's brother put a dent in my car and I drove my fist into a wall, again and again, trying to beat an answer out of it for why the summer had gone and left us ghosts in the dawn,
I am as of yet unsure what this tapestry will look like when it is completed,
I promise a great deal, but I wouldn't dare bet on destiny
All I can be sure of, is that at the end of any highway,
There is a Waffle House,
And there will always be those,
With poet souls and hungry mouths waiting,
To turn something ordinary in to legend

The party has been over, but there will always be those who cannot stop,
Not until the very last body hits the floor,
Not until the lights go down on cities we used to love people in, when the ash tray overflows out onto sidewalks that long for disease, to die, to be reborn, made clean, only to be soiled again by our fascination with them
We should have learned by now how to not ruin something by loving it
But where there is emotion there must always be casualties
I reconcile this with myself in the dark nights I spend painting landscapes of the street from the porch
I watch the summer wilt and fall apart, piece by piece, and my hands cannot dig a hole deep enough to escape the fallout
When I leave this place, all I will take with me are words,
And when winter comes I will burn as many of them as I have to to keep warm

I could never bring myself to judge anyone for what they do to survive

I am writing this in my head by the first light of morning while you sleep beside me
I am lying awake
I am counting your breaths, translating each one as a confirmation that I transcribe to hieroglyphics with my fingertips on your stomach
I am memorizing where every part of your body is located in relation to mine and I am taking steps to maintain proportions
I am letting my hair become tangled in yours because I am afraid of not touching you
I am deconstructing this moment as it unfolds, letting it envelop the alarm clocks and my sense of self
I am reconstructing my visions of the future
I am reconstructing myself to fit accordingly
I am born again
I have never been touched
I have never been kissed or broken or ****** or bruised
I am letting myself be made clean
You open your eyes periodically, look me in the face, then fall back asleep
I am reminded of watching the sky for hours in my youth because I never wanted to miss even one shooting star
I never regretted the exhaustion then, and I **** well won't now

Talking in code
Talking in rhyme
Sitting up summer nights on balconies high up enough to reach out and knock knock knock on heaven's door drunk on gin and chewing mint leaves trying to come to some kind of solution
There are problems here that need addressing but how much easier would it be to just ******* about it?
Piecing together alibis from the body counts of tragedies, picking up as many fragments as we can with the little strength we have left
We didn't do very much to deserve to feel this tired did we?
We could never figure out how to remove ourselves from the equation
Answers are a lot harder to come by when you've lost all personal interest
Where is this going?
Where does this progression end?
I wanna see what else is on
When I was a child I had recurring nightmares about televisions
When they shot Andy Warhol all he could say was that his entire life had been television all along
I don't know how to find comfort in familiarity
I am missing the connection here
I wanna see what else is on