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.

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

The flickering fluorescent
Places accent on the life we could've shared:
Laughter creeping through every drunken little recess
Of the ****** apartment on West campus

As my sister sneaks off with her boyfriend,
Leaving me with the continued potential energy
Of everything I've known lately,
I can't help but allow the thought I've been
Repressing for half the year
To worm its way,
Like the first decomposers into a buried coffin,
Into my mind

Maybe you are really
Happy without me but as I sit here,
Forcing smiles and drinking beer, eating guacamole,
I miss you anyway.

Somebody turns off the lights, saying that
The flickering light hurts their eyes.
Somebody else screams at the dark, in jest
And I'm thinking that at least
The darkness is consistent.

Sometimes in fleeting moments,
Usually after you’d been drinking,
And often during those quiet, dark nights
When we’d lye in bed together,
Hands tracing only absence
On one another’s skin,
You’d look at me in this sort of
Fantastical way.

For me, it was always sort of like
Looking out at the ocean
And thinking for a second that you’re seeing
Infinite blue,
Though it’s really just the color of the sky
Reflected.

Even then, in those transient instants
Of eyes meeting for a second too long,
I’d sometimes think just that I’d miss you
As the subject of my poems.

Then the ice storm came.

The slickness of the roads kept me from you
Days before the storm and days after it,
Such that the sharpie and permanence,
With which I once marked the potential for our love,
Is faded now too.

My heart is a million different places, pieces;
A million different people,
Subdivided like America
To its breaking point.

But I brought my pen in from the car today
And the ink is thawing now
Despite the fact that the next love poem it writes
Will be for someone else
(Which is okay-
I think I’m okay.)

At the top floor of the skyscraper that touches the sun
A man sits with his bourbon in hand, looking out over his creation:
The world in which people shine like glass

Something in that dark yellow of the bourbon reminds the man
Of that time he saw the world’s last tree
Twenty year before it fell.

It was when he was still young and naïve,
His visions of eternal life and glass people,
Still on the brink.

Some instinctual twitch in the back of his brain,
Passed down from the apes, guided him to climb it
But the first branches were too high
And so he cried,
Like a child who cries after stubbing his toe.

It’s while he’s still thinking
Of that first and only time
Seeing a tree beyond a screen
That the man takes his final sip of bourbon,
Though the glass is still half-full.

With the first gunshot in two thousand years,
The bourbon drops to the floor and
Shatters

The snow wasn’t beautiful
Until I noticed the snowflakes
And the way this blanket too long associated
With the cold and the sad
Hangs on the branches,
Draping itself over every twig and tiny piece of bark
That keeps it from the ground
And up and glimmering ,
Miraculously,
In the upper canopy,
Whose complexity
It also takes the snow to see

Today it fell
Like stars across the land:
The unfixed permanence
Of Earth's ceiling
(Just a dome with
Little pinpricks of light)

Ask: what's the weather like
Outside?

My hand raised over my head
To hold my father's.
I skipped across the blacktop
By the playground
Thinking that those red streaks
Looked like the meteors
I envisioned falling
Through the solar system.

It's interesting:
It can be both a blue pill
And a red,
Taking me away
But leaving something more honest
In my place...

Walking through the parking lot today,
Drowning in the sea of smog,
I open my mouth and stick out my tongue
To taste the rain
Like I once could-
But now instead of a smile
I send the sky
A whispered apology
And walk away, still trapped
Under this irreparable
Dome we've ******

To Hushpuppy in the Bathtub
I’m sorry
That the best I can do
Is offer a meager apology
And say
“I’ll remember you”

I’m just a rich white boy
In the depths of corporate America
And my lone voice shouting out your name
In the cacophony of passing cars
Might not make it very far
But I’ll try anyway, Hushpuppy

I pinned those wilting flowers to the wall
And a month later
I still smile when I see them

We'll see what December brings

The grey sludge on the sides of the roads
Has really been there
Since the heat of July
But only recently did my focus shift
From the glistening white
Of our summer snow

Maybe I just need another
Attitude adjustment-
Let's go have a snowball fight;
The seasons don't seem to be changing
Any time soon

Ever since, I've been afraid of the telephone ringing:
That metallic chime intruding at any second
Drawing us from our ornaments to "have you seen her?"

"Have you seen her?"

Maybe if they hadn't told me to get the phone that day
It wouldn't be quite so bad still
But every time I see that tree in our living room
Standing for family, love, hope
Everything that was smashed that day
All around me and entirely within me
Replaces again all that's been slowly healed

That red little ball falling
From shaky hands and weak branches
Shatters on the floor with a sound like a telephone
And those red little pieces linger just to be stepped on
Just to draw blood
And there is
Still
Blood

Two dead and however many phone calls
Shattering ornaments at every little decorating party
Where someone is stupid enough to say "I'll get it"
And everyone else is stupid enough to care,
Like humans do,
About all the things they can't control.
Like the snow falling, I mean,
There's no need to scream at the sky-
Your god can't hear you.
Just go back to the Christmas tree
And pick up where you left off.

There's probably 800 dead in Syria today anyway
And I can't seem to make myself give a **** about that, so
Why should I even really care all that deeply if
There's one less ornament on my tree?

I step naked into the scalding shower
And almost instantly the dreams,
Which haunted my sleep the previous night,
Rise up with the steam,
Leaving behind a half-sadness
Reminiscent of the first frost, quick to melt,
Glistening and sparkling beyond the window-pane

Like frost turned to dampness of Earth
Are the footprints left on the bathroom floor
And the beads of water trapped in ***** hair
Begging as dreams do, to be remembered
Even as, inevitably,
They fade

The preacher turns to a clear blue sky
And begs for an end to the snow

We're all just scar-tissue of scar-tissue
By the end

My dog’s eyes are wide;
He’s more alarmed than I’ve seen him in months
Although to be fair
I haven’t really seen him in months.

He looks at me
Like I might be able to make the wind stop
But I’ve been too busy lately
Blowing through with that wind
To even pause and scratch his ears
Let alone change the weather

I listen to the November rainstorm
Blowing through with the violent intensity
Of a first kiss
Or a last ****
And though I know I can’t change the weather for him
I still take a brief pause during the storm
To scratch his ears
And calm him down

A hammer smashing through
A bright blue wall
Showing reality’s ultimate grey:
A journey more like hell
Than anything I’d known before

Sitting on top of that dam
Which flowed like the river did
I tried to talk to you
But the words got lost
And somewhere in that mess
Of dilated pupils
And impossible patterns
Of light and sound
I remembered what is was like
To be in love.

After my high subsided
And I changed my clothes
I sat lazily at your counter
Doodling and thinking back
To the few words we'd managed
To push through
The nightmarish vacuum
Of pink and green swirling trees
Which haunted our stone blockade

You asked if I was okay
And I told you “yes”
With half
Of my too-quickly beating heart

Maybe you put your hand on my shoulder
Or maybe you didn’t-
I can't really remember-
But you said
“It’s okay to say you’re not”
And definitively I assured you

“I’m not”

Some of these books
I wouldn't remember reading
If they weren't on my bookshelf

They say you're not supposed
To wake up
A sleepwalker
But more often than not
I want to remember in the morning
The moments I fell in love with
The night before

I want to really remember
All the books on my bookshelf
And some of them
I haven't even read yet

Wake me up.

Inside we drink tea and eat steaming waffles
While outside a white blanket drapes itself
Even over our minds
Painting things in a sweeping grey
That glistens in the sunlight

It’s a little too cold out
So our noses are a bit runny
And the heat’s on a little too high
But the maple syrup never goes bad
And neither does your laugh

Your thumb moves across my the back of my hand
Like it did in the summer
Gently; without much pressure
And in between my fingers I can feel your heart beat

If you wanna go outside though
I have a really nice hat
And some really nice gloves
And if you wanna go sledding
I have a toboggan too
So we can go down the hill
Together

I heard you say
"I love you" tonight
For the first time in months
Lying in my bed
And pressing the recorded ghost of you
Harshly to my ear

But the memory of that grand perfection
Captured in your voicemail
Is more or less a façade
For when I could actually reply
Somehow things never seemed to go
Quite as smoothly

I almost cried tonight
Mostly out of habit

I almost said "I love you too"
Mostly...

You looked at me today
(When I finally forced your eyes
To meet mine)
Like I wasn't just. stranger
But a homeless man on the street,
Cursing at you and beggin you
For the dime or nickel
Which capitalist America
Demands you not give up

The time we spent the evening
Making love in your bed
You told me you wished
We were just ten years older
So we could look towards marriage
And a family.
I wonder what you think
About that night now

I haven't cried
Since that night at the end of August
When we popped bubbles and first kissed

But I've wanted to cry
Pretty much ever since

I sometimes wish I hadn't popped
Quite so many bubbles that night
Because I've really missed the thrill
Of a tiny little third grade crush
And I've really missed the person
Who's really "just" my best friend

I think lately I've been blowing more bubbles
Than I've been popping

You were my heart
But in that endless pulsing rhythm
I got lost in translation

I filled my blood with nicotine
To keep myself as far from
The truth of you
As I could

But every buzz wears off sometime
Leaving us listening only
To a single near silent refrain:
"I'm sorry."
"I know."
"I'm sorry."
"I know."
"I'm sorry."
"I know."
"I'm sorry..."

I wanna keep dancing on your stage
Please don't turn off the lights
Please don't go home quite yet
Because I've missed these notes you play
And I've missed
Each one of you
The drummer, the singer, the bassist...

Sometimes I'm just sitting in school
Thinking of those somehow long-
Passed summer nights
Where we'd pick up the tempo
Or maybe just slow down
Trying to lose track of time
In the back of your car and
Where'd the amp go?
Where did you go?

I needed to tell someone else
Because I couldn't let
The only person who knew
All (or I guess almost all, now)
Of me
Fade into a ghost

Somehow though
Today's sharing didn't relieve me
Of quite as much burden
As I thought it might

I lied to my mom the other night
About what I had for dinner
With my dad
Because I didn't want her to ask
Why it took so long
To just eat a pizza
And I didn't want her to be sad
About my half-shrug of response

Flying through the sky with you
Anything was possible

Lichens swirled around us
And we swirled around one another

Tree bark crumbled and fell
Though maybe it was just old reservations

Two tabs of acid
Two sets of lips

One afternoon
And one unbreakable friendship

I stared at an old tire swing
Thinking that even when we grow up and forget
The playgrounds of childhood remain

Then I walked a little bit south though
And found the playground
I used to go to with my Dad
Torn down,
Replaced with a field

It's okay though
Because for a long time
Those happy memories were just like the pasta
In the back of my friend's car
Rotting away
But never smelling bad enough
To actually clean up

We don't have to roll down the windows
When we drive anymore;
The smell is gone,
The playground's gone
And we can finally let ourselves be warm
If a little bit sadder

"Come exploring with me, darling
Let's fall in love
By the side of a man-made lake
Which man has lost to time"

Letting gravity take us to its floor
I looked in your eyes
And you looked in mine
But the glances we exchanged
Were radically different somehow

"Hold my hand as I fall asleep
And remind me in the morning
Of how bad my lips tasted
So we can laugh about it
All afternoon"

Lying in that cozy little nest
I was off and on hard through the night
Never really knowing how hard,
As our bodies pressed together,
You were trying to love me too

"Let's ride our bikes
Still through that thunderstorm
Which somehow in all the time that's gone by
Has never ceased to rain."

Even as a writer,  the real world
Often seems too well described by metaphor
(You wrote on cotton candy clouds
"Rain, rain, go away
Come again
Tomorrow")

"And we can stay up late
Rolling joints; smoking six
Remembering all the things"
Through vastly different lenses
"That of course we could never forget"

I was so high that night
That I don't even remember all that happened
So I kind of hope I kissed you
Just to know I kissed you once
Not thinking it was a last kiss

"Maybe someday,
When the sun rises in the window,
We'll know that at the next sunrise
We'll both still be in that bed
Smoking joints and kissing
And falling even further
Into love."

I miss you
On mornings like this one.

"Come exploring with me, darling..."

Stainless steel **** spills
Out of my ****
As I hold my breath in restraint
Trying, failing to prevent my mind
From circling back in ******
To its constant

I drew a Baoboa tree tonight
And had the drunken thought that
If trees could bleed
There wouldn't be
Any more hate

I'm sorry that liquor
Always brings me back here
To sleep
Under a Baoboa tree

I just read all the poems you ever wrote
And at the end of the last stanza
I asked for another
But on second thought
Let's write this one together-
You don't even have to worry
About crossing the T's
Or dotting the I's
Because I've got your back
And I'm not about to look away

I can't help but feel
Like this rain
Is foreshadowing something
And to be honest
I'm really not looking forward
To having this conversation

But maybe,
Though all my life's goals
Contradict this idea,
Metaphor in the real world
Can't really stand
As much as I'd like to think

Maybe this time the sun
Is still shining above the clouds
And I can be happy
Despite how this conversation goes

I wonder if it might have been easier
For you to let go
If you’d just known:
I wasn’t in the process of loosing myself
But in the process of finding myself

Sure, I was on this road for hours
Before I felt like I’d moved
More than just one minute
From where I started
But somehow,
Sitting by a little lake,
And fishing without a fishhook
I finally got a bite
And I began to reel myself in

All of life
(Just a coming and going
From the house
Where I smoked a couple cigarettes
A couple months ago)
Conspired to let a few rocks fall
To the bottom of a river;
To finally let a little bit of water
Flow over this dam
And keep rushing onwards

In the warmth of your basement
We sat under sweaters and blankets
Kissing when we hit writer's block
And eventually
Writing over one another
In a startlingly permanent way

For the rest of the evening
We didn't say very much at all;
We just let the moment sink in
Under our skins
Manifesting itself
In the shivery feeling you get
When a hand
Almost touches yours

When I'm driving,
Too often lately,
I've been sitting in the passenger seat

A whirlwind mosaic
Of all the parts
So impossible to relate
Flies by beyond my windshield;
A visual symphony in tune
To all the music I love-
To all the songs you hated

I've looked forward
To this time of year-
The start of a winter
Threatening persistance,
The rain changing to sleet...
Even the freedom to leave the windows up
And the reminder of you in every breath
For months

Perhaps I just need
To sit in the driver's seat next time
(Or any time)
And begin stringing my mosaic together
So that maybe
Spring will come quickly this year

Sitting on a rock
In the middle of a little pond
With a girl I met just once before,
I looked at the treetops
(All ash trees;
All ash soon)
And thought about kissing

But the weight
Of all the lips I’d kissed before
Kept my mouth from hers;
Kept ‘her’
From becoming ‘you’

And as the first drops of rain
Began to fall like thunder
And I fled that little swamp,
Leaving the almost ash
Ash trees behind,
I felt a twinge of sadness
Despite my better judgment
And I thought
More about kissing

Tripping on acid the other night
And staring at the clouds, the trees
I realized that I just wanted
To be seeing the trees as they were
Rather than as a shifting pattern
Synthesized in a lab somewhere
To separate fully
What is seen what is there

And after the day was done
And I climbed in to my bed,
Realizing that it no longer smelled
As much like trees as it did
Sweat, *****, and smoke,
It took me quite a while
To fully fall asleep

In the bagel shop
By the Barnes and Nobel
In that corner of the shopping center
That's barely winter walking distance
From the hallway in the high school
Where we first met and first kissed,
We shared the warmth
Of an electronic fireplace
And the pages of the ****** books
We were both racing to write;
The ****** books which would very soon
Be written over with permanence
In new handwriting

I remember playing the ukulele
A year ago
With you in my living room,
My fingers showing yours
The chords you still had to learn
(A perfect excuse
To hold your hand)

Sunlight pouring,
As the rain does now,
Through the windows
Illuminated
The carefully moving corners
Of your lips
(An imperfect
Yet somehow reasonable excuse
To kiss them).

This morning
As our noses pressed together
And our breathing intermingled
In the bed where I lost my virginity
To the girl
Who taught me those same chords
(To the girl whose lips
Mine found an imperfect excuse to kiss
This afternoon),
I wished that I still had chords
To teach you;
I wished that the sun
Would shine through the rain

"Hello Olivia,"
My fountain pen
Drunkenly demonstrated
In my dad's kitchen,
Which the girl who sat
Behind me in math class,
Carefully collecting lists
Of favorite words
(Penultimate; ephemeral),
Cautiously observed
Was not my kitchen too

I'm trying to see the world
Through these glasses
But I just see
My own reflection

All these glasses
Empty around me

A wisp of floating smoke
Is carried blindly into my lungs
And embraced warmly
By the clammy bruised hands
Of a girl I no longer really know;
A girl whose chapped lips reek
Of two-year-old chap stick
And the ephemerally tattooed
Moments of mine

But then I exhale
And the smoke dances up to light
From the almost new moon