We stood between the two doorways
In a little room that was outside of inside
But not quite outside.
We were there and the cold was there but,
At least in terms of God and of War,
We were alone.

It was with utmost neutrality
That you spoke of all you hoped to change and I,
Like that night we laid drunk on the dock
While you outlined all the times you'd almost died,
Was silent.

We lingered in that little room
A bit longer than we needed to,
Already engaged in the sort of pre-emptive nostalgia
That I know will tear these last few months apart.
But soon enough
You walked through one door,
And I through the other.

The cold bit at my face in all the places
I'd hoped it might not, and I thought,
As I walked to my car,
Of how cold the water had been
When we'd jumped,
That warm summer night,
Into Lake Erie.

How vividly the memory of your lips
Struck me in that cave of ice
As if one of those stalactites,
Frozen in perpetual motion,
Had thawed just enough to crack and fall
Directly down.
It didn't need to fall though, it's fall was implicit
And as you held me there, pressing my back
To where the ice met the stone I realized
That's where we were, too-
Trapped in the ambiguity of permanence meeting
Utmost transience.

The waterfall melted around us
And each second we spent
In the starkly unstable cave hidden behind it
Was a risk then uncalculated.
With the eruption
Cascading in the quietest places of memory
We willed the thaw, really,
Begging 'let it drown us;
Let all the ice melt and let it
Pull us under and from to river
To our corpse floating through the ocean,
Let it pull
All away
From the stone.'

New Year's resolutions rarely carry into February
But the resolution of a new year
Will last twelve ******* months anyway.

It is the chipped ceramic gnome
Left to weather outside an abandoned apartment,
Which calls me cataclysmically to the forefront,
Asking how long it will be
Until I get to write '13' again. Or '12'. Or '08'.

Because to get used to writing '14'
Is to get used to the empty space between fingers
And the mess of my room, which will only fade
When I do.

It won't be until the storm comes,
When the gnome falls from banister to sidewalk,
That I'll stop asking how long
And begin to write '15' instead.

Everything is barren now.
The leaves have fallen and the bugs have all
Retreated into the warm houses.
I saw one in my shower this morning
And as I turned on the faucet, it flew
To the next wall. I worried that
The water bouncing off my body
Might drown it or make its wings too wet to survive the winter
But I did nothing to move it.

I understand that the only reason
You don’t like riding home from school with me anymore
Is because you can’t smoke cigarettes in my car.
But now I have to drive by the twin oaks alone—
Those twin oaks where I sat with a girl I was sure
I would soon come to love.
Staring up at the leaves with her, I’d thought maybe
That girl and I were just like the oaks:
Two separate bodies joined at one point.

Now the way snow hangs makes it clear.
Those canopies could only spread and grow
Once the oaks had parted, leaning in opposite directions.
You used to distract me as we drove by,
Keeping my mind from the haunting reminder
Of the future that failed to pass.
Without you with me there, I’m left to question
What I’ll see when this pristine white landscape
Finally melts.

That bug on the sterile white porcelain
Seemed to scream this morning as I idly hummed a tune
Written by some friends who moved to Athens.
It screamed with the smog of unsmoked cigarettes
And leaves that can never be unfallen.  
My humming
Was screaming too.

The four of us wrote each other fortune cookies
And the sad part was that even though
The cookies we baked together were sugary and warm
None of the little squares of paper inside
Made much indication of one another.

You remarked that it had been exactly a year since
You were where we were:
Lying in a snowy field and watching the grey clouds rush
From the horizon to the moon
Illuminated by city lights too.

You protested those lights, throwing doorknobs
For the darkness but you couldn't break that streetlamp
Until the sun had already risen and the LSD
Had already worn off
Such that there was nothing to do
But read our fortunes quietly and sadly reminisce
About that night we'd spent
Melting the snow beneath our bodies.

I felt your ghost sitting in that chair with me today.
I don't know when I took to sitting in it too
But I mean, it makes sense that I'd like it.
People develop the same tastes as their best friends,
And as their fathers.

When dad left you were their to make it
Not so bad.
And you didn't like dad very much
So you had no reservations
About adopting his chair as yours.

But then you left too
And six years later
The scars both of you left behind
Have only just now healed enough
For the chair to gain me as its occupant.

I reclined it it all the way today
And as the silence engulfed me
You and I cracked up together
And played video games while my dad
Sat there too: snoring,
Unable to stay up with his kids
To watch The Rugrats
Before putting them to bed.

The dishwasher isn’t running
So I can’t clean these mugs for our tea.
I try to just use the ***** ones
But the moment of grand illusion,
In which seem like the stove might just light,
Is passing and the water just sits there
Awaiting that spark to boil.

Long after the moment passes, the gas still rushes out
With this rapid clicking sound that makes my whole body
Flinch in its rhythm.
I’m thinking: don’t clean them by hand,
Don’t go get a match.
But I can’t keep my feet
From dragging across this too-smooth
Tile kitchen floor,
To the sink,
To the cupboard.

It doesn’t matter though,
Because by the time everything’s set and ready
The water’s all gone- spilled across the floor.
I don’t notice. Even as the water
Seeps into my socks
I light the burner with the match;
Nothing for it to boil.
Sitting pointlessly on the flame,
The teakettle slowly starts to melt.
I watch that glowing red iron drip towards the flame
And slowly the dampness on the bottoms of my feet
Starts to hit me.