The best part about knowing you’re gone
Is knowing I no longer need to try;
The worst part is
Knowing I no longer can.

I will always think of you
When I listen to Andrew Bird,
And will always miss you
When I choose the next song.

Seriously though,
I see no point
In writing sad poems
About a girl who will
Never even read them
Never even care again
That I put my heart on the line
While she looked at other men
So instead, I’ll write something happy
Something about me.
Today I drank a bottle of wine,
Kept a smile,
And pet a dog.
I feel congratulatory.

Dear New Jersey,

There is only one state I hate, and that state is you.

I know it’s unfair, given we have a whole other 49 states for me to have a distaste for, and as home to 8,721 square miles and 8,8640,590 people, New Jersey is not only home to the ungodly show, but the girl I once knew I could have loved. I could have loved, given the chance.

She said “Spanish” like “Spaunish,” “Camera” like “Caumera,” and I fell for it. I loved the way her A’s in Mass turned to the ponderous AU’s of southern folklore. She had never seen the shore, but lived 15 minutes outside “the city,” which I learned is term for New York City, which is the Jesus of suburbia when it comes to kids who live far enough way from Boston to realize we are the true Yankees you should be rooting for.

Not to mention, I was lost there once, in the mountains, coated by a blanket of fog with my father yelling in the front seat of our Hyundai as mum held the maps and did her best to navigate. And to be honest, that’s an unfair reason to have a distaste for a state, as the fog and the mountains were beautiful, and minus the cussing and the yelling, I go back to that place a lot nowadays.

I truly hate New Jersey because of her, as a reflection of how she made me feel about my own self, my own state, of being that is. And because I’ve always felt Bruce Springsteen was overrated. Sorry Bruce, but Blinded by the Light was the closet thing I ever got to singing your songs, and I always preferred Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s version. I fell for the keyboard, mainly, and the way his lyrics flowed like whiskey into a Friday night kept me dancing for more than five minutes. His finished piece was over seven minutes, you know, and I listened to the whole thing.

She spoke of the city a lot, though she wasn’t a city kid. You could tell by her smile and the way she laughed at all the things I said, all the time, like she was nervous of what I thought. Her brown eyes were lost in a smiling squint when I spoke, and her camera bounced against her chest as she laughed. She was beautiful and smart and naive all at the same time, and I loved her for it.

New Jersey, I mainly hate your state because I no longer have a reason to go there. Because I made so many plans to visit, so many dreams to photograph you, to write you, to allow your festivities and sites and proximity to “the city” to change my own view on how I saw you, which were all crushed within a single night, within a single conversation, from a now single girl. I feel this unfair to say to you, but I hate your 8,721 square miles and 8,8640,590 people solely because of one girl. One beating heart amongst millions, one lonely state within a union.

I don’t think I’ll ever plan to visit you again, New Jersey, unless it’s another one night stay over on my way to New York City. And for that, with all I know you must have to offer under the mystique of America’s Armpit, I apologize to you, New Jersey. I never gave you the chance you deserved, and never will.

If you can ever offer me more than something related to heartbreak, you know you can always find me in New England, the heartbreak capitol of my United States. And while she may be a child of "the city," she broke my heart closer to home, and I'd rather roam the myriad streets of Boston than the gridlock of New York any day.

Oh, and Newark *****.

One of the most amazing things about women is, they shine early. At age 20 you can tell the girl you’d love to love, and she shines. Her smile and her eyes light up the room like a roaring fire. And while she smiles, she loves the world around her, twofold; like a young girl in lust and a woman in love. She draws you in, and you cannot escape.

When you’re young, she will never love you as you deserve, if you deserve to be loved, which is a conundrum in itself. And that’s the motive here, and I apologize to those looking for a more obscure message. But when you’re 21, with a ****, and hormones, and a life waiting for you to **** it up, chances are you are not ready to be loved. But you want to be, because we all want to be. It’s our incarnate desire as humans to love and to be loved, unconditionally. And while she smiles, and while you think you love her and she’ll love you, understand she’ll always be looking towards the future, because the future right now is the best she has, and if you aren’t the future, which you likely aren’t, say goodbye.

It will get better than you. It will always get better than you, statistically. Statistically speaking, you are not the best. Statistically speaking, you will never be the best. It’s statistically impossible, and even I understand this having failed every math class I’ve ever begun. It’s impossible because you are you, human, and from two parents who were also human, so therefore perfection was never truly in your nature. You can try, and the rest of us will watch you fail. And as you fail, we will laugh. We will joke, and we will make fun, until it is our own turn to fail, wherein we shall weep and expect the sympathy of those around us.

But she’s still smiling, only now, at other guys. And these other guys have bigger chests and more defined arms than you. **** IQ and emotional reality, they have abs you couldn’t ever work for, and they’re southern regions, let us not digress. She wants Superman, all you can offer is Clark Kent, before he’s cool. You are not a superhero. You are mortal.

You will love her, you may always love her. She had the smile to draw you in at first, the smile to draw you in at night, and the smile to keep you awake for years after. She was it, she was perfect, she was the one, or so you tell yourself. Because hindsight offers the beauty of 20-20 vision, and you want so badly to see clearly. But you are young, as is she. And in youth comes lust, comes the man with defined features, chiseled abs and the IQ of your ******* dog.

BUT he’s not as hairy, thank god, because you own a Golden Retriever and you’d be ashamed to know the girl you loved is ******* someone hairier than you dog. At least you can pet your dog, but petting a man is, frankly, a little creepy. At least you know she’s not ******* someone like you, who undergoes the self conscious activity of man-scaping every Friday, when your friends pump you up enough to get you dreaming you have a chance of getting laid that night. So you pluck every extraneous hair hoping Ms. Lucky will not notice the red marks and the razor burn where you tried to hide the history of your sad genetics.

So call them Fido for me, of Fluffy or something else that sounds like they dog they are. **** him until your ***** is so ******* sore you forget what my name even was, how I spelt it, or how I pronounced it. And keep doing that, until you realize, eventually, of all the men you saw, of all the men you slept with, maybe one of us knew you’re middle name, and maybe one of us knew how you pronounced your last name correctly, and one of us us knew exactly how you spelt your first name, with the two t’s and the e at the end, every try, no regrets.

I never got it wrong.

I never told you this story:

The story is, when we first me, first falling in love, I had a choice. I was at a party, with my friends, and you texted me. You wanted to get drunk, bring a friend and show off some new guy you met.

And I was talking with a beautiful French girl.

She was impeccable, with long dark hair and she scared many of the guys away with the intensity in her stare. Her accent made every word a masterpiece, and her style strict Parisian. She did it all like we could do it, but she did it differently. And she could dance.

I asked my friend what I should do.

He took a drink and told me “If she comes man, she’ll only want to dance with you.” He said this as he glanced at the beautiful French girl smiling at me, and I smiled back at her. And that sealed the deal in the kitchenette.

So I walked backed to her, and she held out her hand. She pulled me in close, and I could smell her hair. She smiled as she taught me, laughed as I failed, and it took a while to get the hang of it, but I finally prevailed.

And I danced with the French girl.

I ignored your texts, blocked your calls. And it was her that I was texting on my walk home, forgotten about you at a bus stop far from home. It was the feel her of her body against mine I missed, not yours.

And even though I later chose you, I later fell for you, and I later lost you, that night, I chose her. I chose the dream over reality; someone knew over a scene well seen; I chose love, I chose me.

And do I regret that decision?

Well, out of all the decisions I made which lead me to loving you, I have absolutely no regrets in dancing with the beautiful French girl.

Maybe it was a precursor, a sign I should have taken. But to me, it’s just a memory, and a memory I’ll never forget, a memory I'll always have about dancing with the French girl in the downstairs kitchenette.

Someday,

I want to sell it all,

And buy a Leica,

And a 35mm lens,

And tour the world,

And show you all,

"That's not what you need."