Sometimes my best poems
Are better left unsaid,
Forgotten in my memory
For the rest of you
To read in me.

Have you ever
Mixed memories
With what you wished
They could be,
Creating a fictional
Reality
Blended together
Like bitters and whiskey
Vermouth and a cherry,
The Manhattan of your dreams.

I wish I could tell you
Every little thing
I think in my head
But I can't because
They move too fast,
Are too slippery to grasp
And hold onto long enough
To write into lyrical thoughts
Worthy of your time.

So yeah,
On the subject of “**** him,”
Which you did, for three months or so
In a place three thousand or so
Miles away and
I’m sure his blue eyes gleamed,
When he saw your *** naked,
And I’m sure those blue eyes rimmed
With tears when you told him you weren’t coming back
And he’d have 3,000 miles between him and that ***.

So now you’re a whole ******* ocean
And 246 days later
With a boy with brown eyes,
Me,
Whose **** is bigger,
So they say,
“Like an upgrade,” with the included price tag,
“Like an upgrade,” which you justify as
“Not that bad, really not too bad,”
But you won’t leave me for him.
Will you?

'Who will love you?

Who will fight?

Who will fall far behind?”

Simple as these three lines may be, there is a lot of truth in them, something to keep in mind as we move forward in our lives.  It’s amazing what human influence in your life can accomplish, what forward momentum it can stir. Or at least, what we perceive as forward, because sometimes momentum isn’t always positive. Many times, that momentum is just digging a hole for ourselves.

And as we grow older, and start to think about what makes sense in our lives, we come to find our ideas of happiness, of sadness and of sanity are all skewed in comparison to those around us, those we care about. And as we listen, as we follow, and as we fall behind, we begin to dig those holes deeper for ourselves.

Towards mid life, if you’ve been digging, your hole is chest deep, and you have two choices: escape or keep digging. And those in that position many times tend to keep digging, not for love’s sake, or for the sake of their future, but because digging this hole is all they’ve gotten to know. For years they’ve been digging, whether it be for money, for fame, for love, and that’s all they know. And when you only know one thing, you tend to stick with it, and your choices are slim.

By the end of your life, your skin is sagging and you’ve become tired of digging. Your heart is heavy and your hands weary as you let loose your final breaths and lay back. You’re now alone in this world, under this world, away from everyone, and it’s of your own doing. Every choice you could have mad to leave the hole floods your memory, and you’re stuck knowing, from day one, you chose this. You dug your own grave.

A few young men throw gravel on you, and a headstone is placed above. A few kind words may be scrambled in, or just two dates, birth and death, and a first and last name, if you’re lucky. And the knowing truth that you brought yourself to this point.

If you’re looking for a happy story, this is not the story for you. There are so many ways to dig your own hole in your life, and you may not even realize you’re doing it. From love, to career, to the way you treat your body, your hole is being dug. You could be wiping the dirt of your hands at night, so sure you’ve done a worthwhile thing that you’d never even expect that you've been digging your own grave, plunging yourself deeper into the dirt and farther away from the life you deserve to live.

I can only speak on a small spectrum here, as I am young, and my hole shallow still. But I can say, with confidence, to find people who will fight for you, people who will love you, and get away from digging yourself into a hole. Find people who are the helping hands to pull you out, and who you can be the helping hand back to. And once you have those hands, don’t let them go.

All I can say is, if you want to be happy, stop digging. Stay together and build a treehouse instead.

What makes you feel better
Than long walks at night,
A lung's breath of cold air,
Inklings of dreams and aspirations
With a halfhearted plan to get there.

I viewed our pictures,
Our visual memories,
And felt the chill
On the back of my knees,
of that cold winter morning,
Where the dorms were cold,
and classes cancelled,
and we walked out in the snow,
near knee deep,
and photographed the children playing.
Where we ran into Snowstorm,
Shivering in his sweatpants,
While doing the same as we.
So we drank our whiskey,
warmed by our hot apple cider,
and hot cocoa with schnapps,
While you viewed my photos,
Telling me,
“they’re your best you’ve done,
I love you,
I’m cold, let’s warm up
Like lovers do,
On winter nights.”
And convinced each other
We’d be the ones to hold

One another tight when
Our lives ever got out of hand,
To this cold again,
Together.
And with lights fading,
And buzzes deflating,
At last you told me,
Those pictures weren’t
As good as I meant them to be.

I saw your fire red lips today,
Lighting up someone else's world
With a kiss, to the air, to their lips
I'm sure their heart was in flames.
I wanted to feel that burn
And I missed it, for a moment
And a lifetime.

Times like these are when hearts sink,
Like lame Titanic references, inserted here,
Because I'd like to think it sinks in deep.

Sometimes I feel like it's better to be alone for a long time before trying again.
Sometimes I'm wrong about these things and regret it in the end.
Sometimes I'm right.

This time I'm right.
And this didn't go the way I imagined.

Burn on.

Do you remember that day
We go in your old Volvo after class
And drove west out into west of nowhere
Passing a museum about dinosaurs
And their place in western Mass.
Until we found that old, small town
That belonged in another era,
With small houses, and small streets
And signs on the doors giving various history degrees.

The music you played didn’t fit
With the scenes we passed,
Children on bikes that laughed at us
As we stared down their streets
Hands over eyes like explorers
Notebooks out and ready like cartographers
Pens tips chewed in the ends of our mouths
Like the writers we wanted to be.

And It was all fun and games
Until we had to turn around,
In that corn field of all places,
That seemed to never end,
Because it was fall and the corn stalks yellowed
And I imagined they would have crunched under our feet
In the cool autumn air
I breathed through the open window.

You went deer-in-the-headlights
As some farmer came by in his truck
And you started joking
-Until fear start creeping-
“This is the end for us,”
Because it looked like something from a film

Where two college kids die alone in a cornfield,
****** unsolved
Scythe found with no prints
The beginning of a bad movie script.

But we lived,
Because he gave us directions back home
Back to route 93
Or 94, or 270
Where we parted for one of our final times
Before you left for the big city,
Losing this memory to history
Like all those little houses
And all their little families.

I went to college
in search of success
and found heartbreak;
In search of full pockets
filled heartache;
In search of change
faced namesake.

Sometimes,
I have feelings.
And sometimes,
They pour out like
A bowl of chicken noodle soup
On on a kitchen table,
When you grab the handles
And it’s still too hot.
So you panic,
Turn, and spill,
And make a mess
Of noodle letters, sauce and
Over boiled vegetables,
With an impossible rhyme scheme
Of mismatched vowels and
Consonants on your kitchen table,
Spelling nothing other than
Failure in the most basic of tasks;
Which makes you wonder,
What’s the point of this
Anyway, to begin with?
Who ever actually
Learned to spell from soup?
I sure as hell didn’t.
My words are my own.
And soup never suited me anyway.

I just pray
The silly words I dictate
Inspire someone new
To write something truly great.

Maybe someday I’ll cross the ocean,
To see if the grass is greener
With a little blue between us.
Or if life is sweeter,
A few hours in the future.

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 *****.

So, we’ve had a few dogs, all the same. Golden retrievers with bigger hearts than brains, that want only the affections of those who love them. And those who don’t. My parents love to say how our first golden, Euka, once tried to get in the car with a random woman, solely because she had a laundry basket full of towels, his favorite chew toy.

In my junior year of college, my parents adopted our third dog, yet another golden, with a beautiful, soft white coat, and no brains to match.

My father, mother and brother all sent me pictures of this magical creature, sitting on house furniture and looking like the dog we have always wanted. Little did I know, he was poorly behaved, and peed like a fountain when excited. That never seemed to phase my dad, however, whose always thought I don’t use the dog to his full potential.

“That dog is a chick magnet.”
“I know dad, I know.”
“Really, just walk the dog, and you’ll meet so many women. So many cute, young women. Look at his face, he’s irresistible.”
“Okay, I know, I get it. He’s cute.”
“Yes he is, and he’s yours, so use him to your advantage.”
“I’ll meet a nice girl, she’ll pet him, and he’ll *** on her.”
“If she stays she’s worth it.”
“Well, maybe I don’t want to meet any cute young women right now?”
“Of course you do. You’re 21. You’re at your prime, and I know you can do it on your own, but the dog, he’ll just reel them in. Trust me.”
“You just want me to take the dog for a walk? Or do you want me to get married?”
“The first one first. Then we can think about the second.”

I went on a walk.
There was a dime.
The fortunes of society wasted at my feet;
Bananas.

We went to museums,
Curated our own desires,
Provided our own insights
To brush strokes
And pencil thin lines
While the world around
Tried to decide
What colors matched our style.

The house on Hillside Ave is massive. It’s three stories tall, with a turret at the top and a set of stone lions at the front steps to greet welcomers and ward off intruders. It used to house 5 people, but now only 4, and even Christmas and Thanksgiving don’t always live there every year.

Before, the gardens the lined the house were beautiful, lining the foundation with more colors than in a Crayola box. At the roots of the flowers was a base of fresh cut grass, offering soft spots to sit and look at the clouds on slow summer days.

That was when Nana was still alive, and when Nana took care of it all. After days spent outside in the sun she’d come in and carefully wash the green of the plants off all her fingers and drink cold lemonade on the porch.

My father tried to take over the gardening, but it’s not the same. He doesn't wash his hands as carefully and doesn't drink lemonade, instead a cold beer from the cooler downstairs. Now the flower beds are a little sadder, the colors not as bright and dark patches of emptiness are seen amongst the once thriving flora. The flowers aren’t quite as happy when he tends to them. His hands just aren’t as green.

I'm just a young man
With big dreams
And a heart that keeps growing
In size for his young lady,
Who has her own problems-
Dreams notwithstanding.

Sometimes love makes you say incredible things.
Sometimes they're right.

There's something about talking until you fall asleep and your arm going numb, but she's too beautiful for you to move it so you deal with the bitter pain of pins and needles, and stroke her hair and kiss her head until she wakes up a little bit after her dream, half asleep, eyes barely open, but just enough for you to move your arm, and a small smile crosses her lips as she recognizes you and you hug her and tell her goodnight. And the morning she looks at you with those fresh new eyes and you know she doesn’t remember that one small moment from the night before, the one small moment you’ll be holding with you forever, flashing through your mind when weeks later she tells you it’s over, that you should take some time alone and that you’ll never have her fall asleep on you again, and you just want to scream “I loved you, I cared for you. I let you sleep on my arm when no one else would, through the hell of pins and needles, and I didn’t even wake you. That’s emotion, that’s devotion!”

But you don’t, because you know she wouldn’t listen anyway, telling you to quiet your writer brain, she doesn’t have time for it today. So she’ll close the door and walk back to her chair returning to the work she was doing before you came to visit, knowing in comfort that she’ll have the entire bed to herself tonight, and you’ll walk home feeling un-whole, alone, like a piece of you will forever be left in Prince 302.

And you’ll fall asleep wishing to suffer the waking pains of pins and needles from a brown haired beauty again. And you'll awake knowing your arm is in a better place.

But your heart is a different story altogether.

The lone man walks into the night, looking up to the sky and cries
“Stop expecting so much from me, I’m only one life!
Only one mind to work with the complexities you compile!”
To which the stars take lightyears to reply,
“Do not pray to us, we are not your kind.”

It's funny to remember
You loved someone;
The feeling foreign,
Awkward in hand,
Rotting in a way,
But beautiful in yesterday
Or week
Or month, or year -

A decade even -
So far
But not too distant
To remind you
To stay far enough away.

There is a beauty
In saying things, simply.

I used to think
I’d rather have a girl
Love me less
Than not love me at all.
But I’ve since learned
That love’s a glue
And without it
Nothing’s held together,
Nothing’s whole at all.

Auntie Jean got a gun and she loves it. She calls it her little .38 special, and she carries it around in a concealed harness under her jacket all the time. She even brought it to Christmas once.

Auntie Jean also loves wine, and she carries that around a lot too, concealed in a paper bag so crinkled it looks like a burlap sack with a glass neck with a cork in it sticking out. She brings that to Christmas every year.

I hate this holiday. I always have. Dressing up like someone else to cover up the monster I truly am has never been an ideal time for me. And trying to hit on the slutty girls with their fishnets and minuscule mini skirts has never been my scene. I’d rather spend the night having everyone dress up to who they truly are: the misogynist, the adulterist, the studious, the conversationalist...I’d rather not hid behind the disguise.

But I love the ghouls, and the ghosts, and the stories we tell ourselves to stay up late at night, reminding each other to check behind the shower curtains at 3am because, you never know, he could be in there.

He could be, or he could not be. You may never know. But it’s always better to check.

I love this holiday for the stories, both of history and of those of today, which we create in our liquor laden haze. The face-covered costumes, the ghoulish festivities, the next morning apologies... Oh, and pumpkin everything.

The horror filled movies and hay rides and walk-through-corn-mazes we subject ourselves to, all in the name of fun, of suspense. I love it, I love every second of it. Heart racing, adrenaline running, it’s life in a sense we can no longer find without the threat of true death behind it. And that’s likely why we do it, as we feel a need for this sense of adventure, of thrill, without the everlasting and promising black blanket of the true end lurking in the shadows

And tonight I went out, dressed to the nine’s, white shirt and tie, and watched as all those fishnet girls passed me by, boys in toe behind their masquerading lies while I smoked cigarettes on the sidelines.  And I had my picture taken, and I had my face mistaken, and I couldn’t help but wonder

Isn’t it just all a lie?

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I love this holiday.

The facts have never been
All too important to me,
You see,
It’s more about what I feel,
And see and think in my
BRIAN,
-Which is BRAIN spelt wrong,
Because doesn’t always work on cue-
My BRAIN,
That dictates the world around me,
And the girls that **** me
And the girls that **** me.
And the girls that think the world of me and this mind,
Or an admiration of some kind,
Or so I hope,
And no
I don’t expect you to understand.
Not like this, not without my hand
In marriage? Hell no, a proposition, I hand you,
So ******* and your little dog too,
Cindarella,
And I didn’t even spell your name right,
Because the classics don’t lie,
But I think lying’s fine,
At least once, tonight.
Tonight, I’m right,
And tonight we’ll be just fine.
So which one was the lie?

It’s those times,
With final hugs and long goodbyes,
Tears that wait until the car ride
When it’s just you alone,
But for the stars above,
That you find yourself searching
For that shine across the sky
To signify
There is a chance
To wish
For one last
Goodnight.

I haven’t called you,
But you haven’t called me, too,
So I guess that makes us both guilty
Of letting the past live on
Where it belongs.

I am weak,
A weakling, one of strength’s stragglers,
Because I cannot hold my ground,
I am weak.

I am weak,
At one-hundred-thirty-five pounds,
There’s not too much to look at,
I am weak.

I am weak,
Because my opinions can be so easily swayed,
and my words so easily turned around,
I am weak.

I am weak,
Because I’m the first back from a fight,
Looking to make amends, no regard to who was right,
I am weak.

I am weak,
Because with you, and I always gave in,
I always came back, praying for your love to see,
This weakness isn’t me
But only to stop your leave.
But now I’ve failed,
Now you’ve left.
I am weak.

Okay, we get it
I love you,
Now please come back into my life
As we’d expect you to
In a romantic comedy,
Or happy-ending novel too,
Because this realization is killing me
One breath at a time.

I have loved you,
And I have seen you,
And you have aged.

I’m too smart to fall in love,
Because let’s face it well all know
It belongs on the T.V. screens
And in between pages
And in thoughts and dreams
And for other people around the world
And for the birds and the bees
And for our parents
And grandparents
And their parents before
And well, just not for me.

Life goes by in a flash,
In an instant plans are memories,
Photographs the only residue
Of past normalities,
And then the realization
You’ve been going on along the whole time,
Without ever seeing it.

I left the town and the girl I loved to come to college when I was 18. The night before I left, she came over and cried, which made me cry, so we cried together about being torn apart by the unloving forward movement of time. The next day she watched as my parents packed my car and drove away, and she texted me the entire time.

I still go home sometimes, for weekends, vacations and holidays, but I never see the girl I once loved. She loves someone else now, and I love no one, and that’s exactly how it’s supposed to go. I’m not even sure I love the town anymore, but I realize it’s prettier than I gave it credit for. However, when I go there now, the friends aren’t around, the school no longer my own and when I walk my dog on the farms the regulars look at me with an hint of distrust, as if I’m a foreigner in their land.

The scenery could be on a postcard somewhere. “Welcome to Small-Town Massachusetts, the town that soon forgets.”

I fell in love at 17,
19,
21,
22,
23
23.

You’re pretty
Beautiful,
In the way you
Speak
Walk,
Talk,
Look at me,
And all our friends
Who spectate
Agree.

What I need
Is to live, learn
And love
A time where
The only lies
I tell
Are to myself,
Alone
In the confines
Of a simple life.

It’s not fair,
To let you into
A mind,
Heart,
Life,
That may not be
Capable of truly
Letting your heart
Reside
Anywhere
Close
To
Mine.

It
Will end
With a broken heart,
Guaranteed.

I can’t
Even let
You start.

My apologies.

While you wait for me I’ll try and get you to change your mind
While you wait for me I’ll try and get you off mine
Love’s a fickle thing it comes and goes with time
While you write sad songs I’m out underneath bar lights

Because love, it doesn’t go away sometimes
Though you give it all these chances
And love, will put you out of your right mind
Knock the footing off your stances


So fall, fall with me
Until you’re bloodied on your faces
And fall, fall with me
Until you’ve thrown in all your aces
And still you’ll fall, fall with me
Until I’ve found a new replacement
So fall, fall with me
Fall in love with me tonight

I have never wanted so badly to be weightless in my life,
Than I have wanted to be weightless tonight.

Two friends sit alone outside the campus pond on a cool fall night under a blanket of distant stars and wrapped in the misleading warmth of whiskey. They don’t speak often, but pass between them a flask. After a prolonged moment of silence:

“Do you ever wonder if, in five or ten years, we’re going to look back on all of this and regret everything?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, every decision you ever made here. Every fight you had, every girl you ever slept with. Every night you went out and partied instead of doing your work, or, every night you stayed in and did work while your friends lived their lives.

The major and classes you chose, and skipped. The types of beer you drank, and where you spent your free time. Every friend you made and every friend you lost. Every heart you passed by and never allowed to open up to you. Every time you opened your own heart and had it closed for you.

Really, every chance you never took, and every chance you shouldn’t have taken. The extent of your life leading up to where you will be. The choices in your life, big or small, that will have made you who you will become.”

“I guess it depends on who I’ve become.”

“What if you’ve become no one?”

“Well, in that light, I think it would be impossible not to. But no one is still someone. They’ve still been somewhere, they’ve still done something.”

Behind them the wind blew across the water, breaking the reflection of the moon into shards of glass while the whiskey ran dry.

These ghosts, the come to me nightly
And wake me with what they say
Of their lives and last charades
Spoiled moments at their end of days

My whiskey dreams are so lovely,
Keeping them away
Until the half light of the break of day
Keeping them in the dark, half seen, at bay.

My decisions may haunt me,
Like these ghosts I once betrayed,
Like these dreams see in night after day
I surrender, I give up; parlé

Because you don’t know what it’s like
To be haunted by you
To be haunted in the night
By love.

I wonder how your city Christmas went,
If the air is still thick, your backyard small
Do you still catch fireflies at night by candlelight,
Or is January too cold?

In time
We clap to music,
Beats of our own drum
Sung by someone
Over small speakers
That only we appreciate.
And we dance without reason.

In time
We’ll look back
And laugh
At the clothes we wore
When we spent
All that money
On those drinks
That we now wish we saved.

In time
We’ll understand
The implications of our actions
And how it all played out
In the end
And maybe even have
A little better understanding
Of how we came to be
Who we’ve come to be.

In time
You will grow strong
With the seasons
And when the leaves fall again
You will stand tall
And brace the winter
Without fail.

In time
We may meet again
Somewhere else
In a different chapter,
And you will be different
As I will be different
But alike in that
We are no longer who we were,
Our words will have changed.

In time
When we understand
We may see it all.

In time
When you are strong
You will succeed.

In time
The time spent between us
Will feel like nothing at all.

In time
Your dreams
Just may come true.

In time
I hope
that
you
will
fly.

I don't speak too much
But I read the news
Everyday

Which is where I've learned how

To expertly phrase
The few things I say
Everyday

Stories you told, they stuck with me
In my field trips through your memories
I loved to learn the places you'd been.

Places unlike anything I've seen,
Brought to life through storytelling
From France to the Indies; the top of Mount Washington.  

Now today, times change and pass you by
Like cars on the street at night
Yet you never seem to mind.

Your stories that never grow old,
In the aged leather bindings of your soul
Will rest peacefully between you and me.

Time it seems, it learns to dream
When the world keeps on turning
As the pages in your book are running out of ink.

Time it seems, has been kind to me
As I've keep my youth steadily
In kind with the rhyme and the reason
Of your bones.

Time it seems, will catch up to me
Some point before eternity,
In kind, with the rhyme and the reason,
Of your bones.

If you missed me,
Like I miss you
And we both wanted
One another, again
Together,
Badly,
Sadly, even,
Because it's been so long
And there has been so much
Anger,
I like to think
We're hear something
More than just
Silence.

I can only write poetry
When I am drunk.

It's 5:27 p.m. on a Wednesday;
The things I do for love.

At home, after work
TV news anchors talk the world,
Overzealous sportscasters yell the scores,
Mindless celebrities say nothing at all.

I never listen,
My ears lie with you.
Only love speaks to me.

I used to spend my weekends on a lake called Ossipee, somewhere up in New Hampshire. During the day we’d spend hours in the crystal waters, working on our tans and watching as our skins turned a shade of golden brown. At night we’d make campfires and roast marsh mellows and play loud music until the old neighbors next door told us to keep it down.

I would ride my bike down to the campsite where my friend Brian’s parents had a place, and we’d ride all over the grounds or swim the lengths of the beaches. When we had money we would go to the general store and stock up on sweets and pizza, and sometimes our parents would bring us out on the boats to explore new sections of the lake.

We did this every weekend until the day that Brian’s brother fell off his boat and drown under the dock. After that, Brian’s parents didn’t bring him up on the weekends as often, but during the week his mother would sit in their doorway and cry, and sometimes when I rode by seeing if Brian was around I’d hear her saying William’s name.

Words are wonderful,
But you can't take them too serious;

Sometimes they lye.