One day you might not be mine
and I might not be yours.
This love may fade; the sun
drops its welcoming arms below the horizon,
bringing about the inky subsuming darkness.

These pages will not turn for you.
These hands will not curl around your own.
These fingers will not drag themselves along
You
will not lend me your thoughts if only for a minute or two
or a week or a month or a year or five.
You will not be here with me.

But when you swallow that bitter black river,
bought from the same café we first went to,
leaving its airy echo in your mouth
for minutes to come, you’ll have my memory.
And I’ll have yours.

It says something about myself
that I see death in dawn rather than a sunset.
That the emergence of life and light means a finality.
That the stilling of the world and its residences is a new beginning.
Is it that I see myself as a predator?
Emerging at night to stalk the metaphorical woods of humanity.
Maybe it’s more simple than that.
On the lonely beaches,
illuminated by the twisted reflection of the moon on the water,
in the 24-hour diners
with a woman perpetually smoking a cigarette at the register
and a tweaker passed out in a booth, holding his partners hand,
under the pervasive neon lights of dying bars,
bearing witness to the drunkards mourning love and liquor lost,
through forlorn streets, under dimly sparkling lights,
maybe that’s where I find myself at home.

The most destructive vice I've ever known
is no drink or herb,
but her salty ocean blue eyes;
in which all my love and hope lies.

Hard, wet rain beat down outside,
the dorm window hardly masked the noise.
I'd remember that.

A faint buzz with the customary accompanied light,
illuminating my now sunless windowsill.
More details to later recall.

Dwindling conversation deserving little response,
oh how this has changed.
Nothing to remember except what wasn't there.

We recognize this is no true finality,
but sometimes the musings of the heart are better left unsaid.

I never needed you,
not to write.
A simple replacement in lieu
of her. To reignite
that flame of my creative vessel.
Fuel to the fire.
Emotions with which to wrestle.
Your licentious abandonment seemed dire,
But now I need no fuel for this fire.

The flame is I.
With hungry, flickering tendrils, roaring.
As it shall be till the day I die.
At once ravaging and warring.
At once outpouring and restoring.

The glow rages on,
a flaming elegy for life lost.
Beats against the chill.

Dazzlingly radiant as a whole,
electric eyes piercing my soul.

I drink my coffee black.
I hate it.
But thats how you drink it.
Always reminds me of that time in the coffee shop,
too nervous to ask for cream or sugar,
so I drank it anyways,
your presence made it tolerable.
Now that black coffee is all I have left,
and my days are spent with your eyes peering out of my cup.

There’s a certain heaviness to it,
the inherent darkness in a silent room,
**** near oppressive,
dirtying,
almost as if it’s crawling into you,
isolating you.
Utterly alone.

Then you remember her,
half curled on your chest, cradled in the nook of your arm,
wrapped around you.
A thin smile,
just barely exposing her thin, top row of teeth.
A faint glimmer in the inky blackness around you,
starlight.

She looks up at you.
It’s an extreme cliché,
to call eyes a window to the soul,
but it’s fitting.
You look down at her and meet her eyes.
Seeing her,
that childlike joy, curiosity mixed with tempered wisdom beyond her years,
all coalescing into beautiful, amber eyes,
makes that darkness feel a bit less heavy.

You see the corner of her lip trapped between her teeth,
thinking on what to say.
You’re doing the same.
Whatever words are spoken next decide an uncertain future,
a tipping point.
“I think I’m falling for you.” You want to say,
but you stay silent,
you’re terrified.
“I’m sorry,” she says almost mournfully.

That darkness comes creeping back,
weighing on you,
on your heart,
and it breaks you.
You like to think she heard it,
that breaking of hearts,
that she understands.
But she still lays there,
enveloping you,
who are unfeeling and alone.

Coffee black, with sugar.
Just how I always take it.
Appearing to be one,
But existing as another.
Stuck as an in between.
Two halves of two different wholes.
No idea which to embrace,
No idea who to be.
Maybe I'll continue on like this,
Pretending to be two people that I'm not.

Waking up to the evanescent rising sun peering through drawn curtains.
Having the wherewithal to spend a day drowning amongst gossamer sheets.
Faint echoes of coffee lingering in the air.
Muted greys and the pitter-pattering of light rains on a perilously lithe roof.
An old book with no virtue besides flowery language and depressed Russians.
An overcast beach and the deep, tainted green of the ocean crashing into a froth on the shore.
Empty restaurants and a table for two.
Your hair pulled up into a messy bun, strands falling to frame your face.
Earnest glances while lying in bed as the sun sets, having never left during the day.
Drinking sickeningly sweet wines straight from the bottle, scattering stains over the sheets.
The heavy and pervasive cigarette smoke between two lovers under a clear sky.
Divergent hands locked, bodies weighed down.
Two hopeful gazers, one looking upward, one looking at the other.
Both dreamers,
both lost.

Men all inshroud in black grayongray funeral dress like the dead they have been asking you to sit down with them and YHWH with the soft gloomgleam of their how dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear threads woven hate betwixt HimI will not be cut so easy as we want and I wont embrace His softhardfirmness not so easily not yet too soon the sun sets insofar as it can below the leftover clouds of fast passing day and we all missed homebound trains in that distraction of the sunset circus setting skies alight with love softspokensilken fire orangedarkwithexceessbright red as hell and sin together those men inshroud and Him rise to mirror set suns O and the soft breathing beyond the trees behind the train just arrived of the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the evergreen everinlove pines behind the train yes I stand to take my starting after all the deadmen I love dont know and Him yes laughing towards home towards old streets of newness and all I we are left wanting HIm in holy union with my footsteps in the quicksand too thick to stand go on then figure out now what it is that you need You Ill step out for a minute to breathe nopleasedontleaveimsorry in air on fire with loveheat Ill love right true holy You please yes take me home to your motherfatherholyspirit so I will impress on them my love for a four letter word that disobeys all linguistic laws but will love me more than none more than any more than I view the wheel that is the world from the side and I see an I that is Him yes that is I yes that is We and my heart goes like mad and yes I reach out yes Ill make You HIm I will here now forever yes yes Yes.

A shooting star across my heart,
you've left your mark.
A memory refusing to fade, love lost but never gone,
I'll see you when I take my coffee black
(just how you like it),
I'll feel you when I fill my lungs with smoke,
I'll remember you when I start to write,
and I'll forget you when I finish.

No amount of trying can make this place a home.
An apartment with blank walls, bare halls.
Alabaster from top to bottom,
furnished with desks and dressers
to match the screen of the dead television.
A bed,
gray as a suffering sky
about to burst at the seams
crying out “Mother,
where have you gone?
Why are you not here with me?”
Only to hear no response, and,
quieted for the time,
returns to the color that everyone
who’s never seen an ocean
imagines them to be.

Nestled in a booth,
Small latte sips,
Brilliant blue eyes,
Sheltered behind tortoiseshell frames,
Engaged with some battered book.
I sit parallel,
******* a long cold coffee,
Pretending not to be falling for you.