The fire-light flickered on your face
And reflected off your tears.
You were staring at our father with two police officers at your side
And the world in fast-motion.

Dad handled it well
And the officers left quickly
But the light from the fire flickered
On my face as well
And only eight years after I grabbed my stuffed animals
And retreated to a friend's house,
Too horrified to spend the night under the same roof with you,
It might as well be me
Standing on display by the fire.

That light's still flickering,
The world is still in fast-motion and even though
Your hair is irrevocably not as blonde as it used to be
(And so is mine)
That doesn't mean it won't still
Lighten up in the summer-time.

Sometimes it seems like I'm not sad enough
About the fact that I've never seen a passenger pigeon,
So I tried to write a poem about one
"The bird that's lost from the skies,
I wish I didn't have to see the smog behind your wings"
But I couldn't conceal from myself
That the effort was half-assed.
And I knew that if I wrote one more line,
The pigeon wouldn't really be a pigeon anymore.
I know I'm wasting too much energy
And pumping too much gas into the air.
Even though I drive for hours I'm always
Just one minute from home,
Trying desperately to fall out of love with the idea of being in love.

The real sadness hasn't been in love though. Not in the illusion
Nor the loss thereof,
But in circling around the block again and again.
And in failing to write a poem
About that passenger pigeon.

Ink from my pen
Leaks from pages ago onto this one
And even as a joke I can't believe my lips
Touched yours tonight.

Also, my hair's been getting longer.
I know I can cut it off at any time
But I'm not ready to set the bottle down and part
With the person I was six months ago

But it's time. My skin is dry,
Those lips that touched yours are chapped, and
When I'm being honest with myself I know that if,
At the end of this persisting winter,
I have a single ******* atom left in my body
From the day I was born,
It'll only be explained by science I'm unfamiliar with and
Not metaphor.

The first time I slept beside you in that basement
You were a stranger
And now you’re a close friend. But somehow
The sleeping hasn’t gotten much more comfortable.
My neck has hurt all day.
And when I said “happy new year” to my grandma
I still felt like I was holding back
A fourth round of ***** –
You know the vomiting actually hasn’t gotten much better either.
I remember the first time, sitting
On somebody’s aunt’s friend’s bathroom floor
Texting my sister “I’m drunk, I’m sick, I’m sorry”
While this ****** girl that I hadn’t yet fallen in love with
Held my hair back figuratively
But you
You held my hair back more literally last night (it’s gotten long),
And you know that I’m glad we’re friends
But that cheese fondue my mom prepared
Didn’t taste so good coming up the other way
And I shouldn’t need, I shouldn’t want, I shouldn’t need
To swig back so many shots
To tell people how I feel
Which might not even really be how I do feel
Because that girl wasn’t really all that ******
And ever since she left (I left her)
I’ve been looking for something to cling to and
I haven’t found it in this person or that person
So I tried to find it in this sea of bottles
But all the bottles empty quickly
And my neck has hurt all day so
Just don’t take it personally if I don’t
Spend the night in that basement with you again next time.

My neck has hurt since she left.
And I’m still drunk.
Still sick.
Still sorry.

I wonder if it ever still crosses your mind
When we stay up too late writing poetry
(Together, but separately, as it’s always been):
Those time we kissed or how nice it felt
To sleep together in my bed-
Because sometimes I’m still half-tempted
To want to fall in love with you

I slap my old flip phone closed
As I hear a honk behind me:
The light has turned green
And I guess I have to keep moving.
I hope I remember to get back to you

We’d sit on the back porch
On the Fourth of July
Spitting watermelon seeds
Into the tall grass,
Which glimmered in the midday sun.

The competition of who could spit the farthest
Never really with a winner,
It was mostly about the feeling of the sun,
Glimmering on our pudgy cheeks,
And the opportunity to abandon our napkins,
Letting that cool watery juice spill
Down our white shirts, leaving pink stains
And permanent reminders of summer

Of course a tattoo is only as permanent
As the body that wears it:
I outgrew the shirts around the same time
As the world outgrew those little black seeds

This year on the Fourth of July
We sat inside making small talk
Because there weren’t any black seeds
In the watermelon we ate:
Just dehydrated flesh, the color a little
Farther from pink and closer
To the off-white color of those flakey little seeds,
Which were miraculously allowed to remain

Yelling at a screen after-hours
With old friends and passersby

Getting drunk in desperation
And hooking up with a boy I didn't know at all
After smoking a jointswith a boy outside
Who I cared to get to know, quite a bit

Dancing around the house that I couldn't have known
Would become a strange sort of home;
Covered in candle wax and visions of Depropheria
With brand new, beautiful friends

Neck craning upwards in the Grove of
Titans: the closest thing to God on Earth

New beginnings and transient visions of forever
On a magical bus ride to New York City

Making love for the first time in my bed,
Our bodies joining and intertwining while
My future slept on the couch downstairs

A teary goodbye and a journey to a lakeside
In the middle of the night where that future,
Which blew through like a whirlwind of a summer storm,
Was foreshadowed once again

Empty bottles lining your counter and you
Tearing down, just before leaving,
All my fences too

Making love for the last time in your bed
Right before the bubble of us popped,
Leaving me only with a bowl of soapy water
And a bendy straw: so many
New chances ahead

A whole community: the family to get me through
That love just passed and the happy moments too-
Falling asleep next to someone new
And clinking glasses on the dock
With a vegan pizza to top it off

The final falling apart of April to August
And a new heartbeat pulsing in
The quiet spaces between my fingers

Trying a new drug at the top of a tree
And laughing all through the journey,
The LSD nothing and your friendship everything

Flickering fluorescent lights reminding me
Of all I've lost; of all I've gained
In this beautiful year
Of 2013