Sometimes I feel like a participation trophy.
Congrats, you did it.
Here's to commemorate your dedication
Now goodbye, go do something better with your time
Earn something you're not afraid to show off
That's worth more than this five cents of plastic
Unless, of course, you're not good at anything
In which case look, everyone, at my trophy.
I participated in something
That took more effort than eating food or breathing
I showed up sometimes
And did some stuff
And I got this trophy I can put on my top shelf
So everyone can see it's a trophy,
But no one knows I barely earned it.
Not that anyone cares anyway

It's hard to be a hopeless romantic
In a sea of hell-fire and friction.
Maybe I'm in the wrong place.

This bakery sounds like couples cooing at each other from opposite ends of the booth
Giggling like no one else sees they're playing footsies under the table
And coffee they've let go cold because no one orders hot, black coffee at five pm in this Arizona heat.
It sounds like cookies taunting the diabetic who really did come in for the salads
And the free wifi, of course.
It sounds disgustingly like the same song I've played on repeat for the past three hours
Contemplating what I want to write about tonight.
But not really contemplating
More like wishing that on the walk to this bakery that's stuck on the corner of a straight road
I'd thrown you to the ground and punched you in the face
For all the wrongs you've done and all the wrongs you're going to do.
But your apathy threw me off, and I kept walking in silence.
Wishing I could have the beach's sands, the mountain's bending rivers,
And that I could run away from here.
This bakery sounds like noise, and sometimes noise is tolerable.
At least noise is better than apathy.

Seeking a gentleman who gets lost in thoughts
Feels everything and holds onto nothing.
Bachelor must tolerate banjos, books, and bare-feet.
A writer is preferred, but not exclusively.
I'm seeking a companion who loves tea and coffee in the afternoons
Must be willing to gamble with the suggested shows on netflix
And suggested artists on pandora.
Bonus points if music moves him in directions he didn't know existed.
Seeking a gentleman whose heart is made entirely of love and passion
With a reasonable head
And an unapologetic twinkle in his eyes.
I warn you that I love sunburns and tank-tops
Rain makes me sad, and I own a blue Snuggie named Ralf.
I laugh too loud at lame jokes about muffins and bars
Cry desperately in movies
And am driven to push boundaries.
***** makes me loose
I'm terrified of fourteen-year-old girls and spiders.
And I consider 90 degrees to be jacket weather.
I'm seeking a gentleman with an empty hand and a full heart
That I can love with all that I have
Laugh with, cry with, dream with.
You can find me in the words on this page.
I'll be waiting.

What I know is that rain will fall
Some days when I don't have time to grab a coat.
But I get to decide that your arms are warmer
Anyway.

We're two feathers from the same bird,
tail and wing.
You can't tell when we're floating together
Which fell first, and which followed
Or even
What happened to the bird.
All we know is that some young thing will grip us in his tiny hands,
Pick us up from the ***** ground
And hold us together in-between two pudgy fingers
Imagining he can fly because of us.

I think I'm secretly just a white girl
With an infinity scarf and coffee with one pump of vanilla, cream and nutmeg.
Mooching off Dad's netflix account.
Pretending to be deep for likes.
And listening to music through my smartphone.
But something tells me it's not a secret.

We’re all born with our eyes closed to what we learn to be the world.
Our sounds begin with crying, our fingers bunched and curled.
We’re taught our eyes should open and our hands should follow suit.
Our lips we’re told to quiet, our lungs we’re taught to mute.
We’re taught rules are to be followed, enforced calmly with intent.
Our freedoms and our thoughts are forced and every feeling bent.
We grow into what we are made of and what we’re meant to be
These people born with their eyes closed now teaching us to see.
A potluck set of people and we’re told to pick just one
Forever and for always our individuality is undone
Over time it comes back around and soon we have to teach
Our own little entrées that bunched up hands can’t reach
Closed eyes are not able to watch and loud mouths don’t ever listen
We bend and break and force our little dishes until they glisten.
We age and rot and give up on what our hearts once dreamed
And dying we may realize that it’s not what it had seemed.
Saint Peter looks inside his book and asks us how we are
And crying with our eyes closed we ask our lucky stars
Why never in our lives we questioned what we were
Here we are at God’s front door and we finally concur
Hands bunched up and fingers curled, eyes shut and kept closed tightly
The world we lived on and left for here was horrid and unsightly.
Yet every morning we woke up and our eyes opened to the sun
We've been quietly observing a world that’s vastly overdone.

We're not soulmates
I'm pretty sure.
Not meant to be
Not meant to hold
Not meant to love each other.
But that can't stop me from dreaming
Of dancing with you
To Ray Lamontagne songs in the moonlight
And growing old with your hand in mind.
We're not soulmates,
I'm pretty sure,
But that won't stop me from loving you
With everything I am.

Arrows raining down on our feet,
And yours aren't covered.
None hit our heads but the bottoms of your feet blister.
So take my sole to save your soul,
Because we can't control these arrows or how far we have to walk.
We can't tell our feet to stop blistering and moving
When there's work to be done in places
That aren't here.
Thousands of tiny arrows make their way from our feet to our shirts,
Just over our left *******,
Where we thought our hearts were no longer.

He's thinking about
His book.
And how he's going to write her into it.
She's a shelf that doesn't hold anything
But a few memories here and there
And some day dreams.
Her eyes sting
And her voice just sort of floats above everything else.
Like a sheet of clouds on a hot July morning.
There's really no place to acknowledge a power so fierce
Using just the ink from a couple of pens.
But he's going to try to capture the way her lungs give out
During long drives down busy highways
And her dark glasses always seem to be locked forward.
Her toes curl in her flip-flops
And she never opens her mouth too wide.
How can words describe someone
That only the pounding of a heart can imagine?

She can only say I love you so many times before
The words mean nothing anymore.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love.
I love.
I love.
I.
I.
I.
.
.
.
Meaningless.
Who feels love anymore?
She asks after one cider too many wrapped in a Christmas sweater.
Telling herself it’s barely November.
You’re a loser.
You’re a loser.
You’re a loser.
a loser.
a loser.
a loser.
loser.
loser.
loser.
Some words sting harder in college than middle school ever made them feel.
And some words linger longer than high school lasts.
*****.
Loveless.
Loose.
She starts another cider.
Pathetic.
Hated.
Failure.
Awkward.
And how about some wine now?
Wine?
Whine.
Win?
Gin.
Drink?
Drink.
It’s time to change herself
She decides this and it is.
And it always will be.
It is law.
It is law.
It is Law.
It is.
It is.
It is.
It.
It.
It.
Is the start of yet another person
With the same eyes but different hair
A different voice.
A new person.
A new person.
A new person.
Person.
Person.
Woman.
With value. Intelligence. Beauty. Grace.
Silence. Voice. Love.
January will be a new start.

There is a city that prefers to be lit by stars
Sporting an abandoned gas station shelter.
Where a mattress finds a roof. A fence finds a fortress.
And in this city with no streetlights there is a house.
With three rooms, a kitchen, and a yard filled with sharp things.
There is also a roof. There is also a mattress. There is also a fence.
There is no one there.
But the cockroach that lives in the makeup drawer in the bathroom
With the mirror that's too high on the wall.

I like
Coffee
As a motif
For reasons I don't even know.
I think sometimes it's because wine comes and goes
But Coffee.
Coffee.
Coffee
I have every night.
To keep me up thinking about the
Bitter taste
That life leaves in my mouth.
Sometimes I think that it's coffee,
The one thing I have in common
With the rest of humanity,
That keeps me alive.
Maybe I need to be awake to feel
What coffee does to me
What you don't do to me.
You should do to me.
Coffee.
Coffee doesn't confuse me.
And coffee tastes the same.
And coffee comes
And coffee stays.
And wine.
And people,
They just don't.

I imagine he's in a graveyard
He's beckoning me in.
I see his warm, sweet smile
And I question what's a sin.
He's playing in the bones I see
Among what we've found lost.
I want so much to join him.
I'm weighing what's the cost.
Mom said he'd be in sunshine
I'd find him in better days.
In the springtime I look around me
In the winter I just pray.
My friends say he's inside of me
But they don't really know.
I can't even picture who he is
To the graves I have to go.
Some said I'd find him in first love
I'd find him and so much more.
Love left me cold and broken
I forgot then what life was for.
He's waiting in the graveyard
I know that's where he'll be.
All my life I've looked for him
As I'm sure he's looked for me.
There are so many people on the Earth.
Some he looks for in the rain
For some he looks in sunshine
For me he looks in pain.
I'll find him in a rope and chair
Or maybe in a lake.
When you have nothing left to lose
You have everything at stake.
I'm betting on the graveyard.
I have nowhere else to go.
The outside voices don't understand
They have what I don't know.
This is my goodbye for now
This is how I pay my toll
To find the happiness I never knew.
This bullet through my soul.
I'll see you in the graveyard
That's where my sun does shine.
I'll find him waiting there for me.
In a grave marked only mine.

You are a rainstorm in an Arizona summer.
I don't know whether I should hide
Or bathe in you.

Touch my skin you ***** rascal
Touch mine and leave your mark.
Cook me with your radiance, let me feel your hands
As they run all over my exposed shoulders, waist, knees, and flip-flops.
Sunspots and freckles.
Burns and chapped lips.
Sunglasses and fenced pools
In the desert.
The cactus, the scorpion, the sun.
The dust in the air is better than oxygen.
And I sit for hours with nothing but love in my heart
For the heat that burned away the hate in my soul.
Sunspots and freckles like kisses from the sunshine
Drying me off in 2 minutes flat.
Hydrating the desert in my soul.

I searched through every word
In every language spoken and unspoken
Spanning continents
Through time and space
And couldn't find one acceptable enough to replace
The one you took from the tip of my tongue
When you kissed me good morning
And left me breathless.

If I were to become a cynic.
Which I'm not saying I am,
Nor am I admitting I'm not,
It would be because of the way you smile
In every direction
Until
Your eyes meet mine.
And do I believe in living?
Or science?
If so, then tell me why,
My life starts with your frown
And there's no chemistry to properly and mathematically explain
How my heart could possibly skip a beat
And my lungs could forget how to work
Every time you find yourself
Near me.

If I were an optimist,
Which I'm not saying I am
Nor am I admitting I'm not
It would be during the times I find myself
On my knees praying
That you'll walk by me and stop.
Speak.
Listen.
Love.
And pray with me.

If I were yours,
Which I'm not saying I am
Nor am I admitting I'm not.
I would love you with a love so infinite
Unbreakable, fiesty, loud, passionate, and changing
That you wouldn't be able to breathe.
And if I believed in love, if I felt love was worth the risk,
Would you?
Do I believe in sacrifice?
Do I believe in the weight of the world, Atlas' shoulders, the music in the air?
If I did, how could it possibly explain
This out of breath, tear stained face I have to carry with me
Everywhere I go.

There comes a beautiful point where you let go.
Words become insignificant and blur together like tongues of fire or grains of sand.
People stop being people. They stand idle and demanding  like traffic signs.
Everyday-- always there-- expecting you to understand their stupendous.
Once you've let go of individuality, and embrace all of this,
You'll rub your calloused hands together, now feeling-less from all those years of hanging on.
You'll wrap your mind around your neck like a plain scarf, ready to walk
Out into the freezing insanity that is apathy.
And it'll all be beautiful again.

May I please be honest?
Just, for once today, tell the truth
About something that means nothing
To absolutely everyone reading this.
It's just one, single, honest statement.
From me to you.
That you can trust with all your heart
And that I can put all of my spirit into
Because I know it won't ever betray me.
I just want to be real.
To make it known that I'm capable
Of honesty.
Here goes.
I hate the cold. It gives me headaches.
And makes me lonely.

The words sit
on the tip of my tongue--
Bubbling up from my chest and
Threatening the bust open the seams of my lips.
And I can't tell you how much it means to me
That you're feeling the same thing too,
And I get to be the stubborn one.

Oh to be loved by you.
To hear the whisper of the words slip up your lungs into your throat
And out of your lips.
And into the air around us, crawling into my ears and nestling
In my heart.
To be held safely, cherished in your arms.
Oh, to be loved--
Actually, honestly, loved--
By you who I love with an honorable, cherishing, true and unfailing love.
To be loved.
To be loved.
To be loved.

I sit at the same table
Drinking the same tea
Nothing here has changed
Or everything, but me.
I feel not overwhelmed
Nor accomplished- nor ashamed.
Time is moving forward
And I feel so unchanged.
I'm numb to my accomplishments
Nothing is defined.
All I've ever worked for
Is just a paper someone signed.
While this world is moving forward
I don't know what I'm doing.
I know what it is I'm trying
And I know what I'm pursuing
But I'm lonely in this calmness.
I'm lonely sipping tea.
I just wish this ever changing world
Would sit and sip with me

We floated down the river with aluminum in our hands and the sun
burning our hearts.
Left the day roaming the streets in heels and shorts by the light of the moon.
Jumping off cliffs and laughing at the stars lighting up the sky.
How silly we were.
To have loved like we were sixteen again but with minds knowing that we're not sixteen anymore.
And that summer will end. Bills have to be paid. Work has to be done.
Love is not a priority unless you're sixteen.
But everything feels so real floating down the river in the Arizona summer.
Even dreams.

If she could grow up to be anything in the world,
She'd be the last thought on his mind before he falls asleep at night.
Or maybe the last person he danced with to the sounds of the winter evening.
Hers would be the last lips his taste,
The last goodnight he whispers as she drifts to sleep on his chest,
The last hand he holds onto
She'd be his last first date, his last first kiss, his last first dance
The last, greatest love of his life.
If she could grow up to be anything in the world,
She'd be his last choice.

There's a complex on the corner of three streets
Just south of something and north of something else.
One time a girl stood there crying in the rain all alone
Waiting to get picked up by anyone who wouldn't ask where her tears came from.
All she could say was she was sorry.
At night there's this dog that barks for no reason
No matter how loud you are, or how quiet you are. It must just be the flowers.
They look like a 13-year-old girl's experiment with make-up.
And they smell like dust in your nose.
Follow the road north to the pharmacy and the convenience store
Conveniently next to a windowless brothel and an indie movie theater.
Follow it south and you'll get an organic market, loose tea shops, and gelato.
Funny how that happens.
If you stand on this corner you'll see cars lining the street in every direction
Squealing and shaking with each extra body shoved inside to enjoy the beautiful dumpster view.
And maybe a pool that no one uses.
There's a complex on the corner of three streets where Atlas goes to shrug his shoulders.
And complain about how heavy his job is.
Loudly tending to his messed up joints.
Drinking with passers-by and sleeping with women who came by to massage his limbs.
Gently, tenderly, and maybe a bit rough every now and then.
Atlas lives, owns, and runs this whole **** town.
And let me tell you, he's in great shape.

Beauty is whispered after silence
In emptiness.
I am beautiful
Tonight I don't remember why,
I will never remember why.
Haunted by memories of times I was tamed.
Beauty is wild and free.
Tender and grotesque.
Regrets when you stop holding my hand.
Whispered in a busy crowd.
baby
I'm sorry. Beauty is not this.
Out of breath, out of sleep, tender mangling of love letters
Unrehearsed tango of the lips in the dark.
I will love you forever.
Will never stop trying.
And your silence is beautiful.

I asked what's a home?
And she said
"a place where we know how to turn on the water."
And I thought maybe it wasn't my home.
So I'll go get some midnight coffee down the street.
And pretend there's no one back there to yell at me
Maybe then I can keep these words in my head long enough to write them down
Or maybe I'll get drunk craning my neck to see the stars
And realizing it's the lights of on-coming cars.
The streetlights in this town are too dim.
I think that's why there's no hope here anymore.

Coffee shop boy sitting at a wooden table with headphones tucked gently into his ears
Sipping espresso or tea from a paper cup that says "Caution: Hot Contents"
Which makes him think desperately of her clothes, and the wind-kissed skin she wears underneath
Wishing he could be the air and wrap his soul around her with each of her steps.
He takes a sip of his latte or black coffee, and feels the burn as it travels down his throat
While it warms his heart he looks out at the night sky framed by the coffee shop window
He glances at the moon and all of the stars and prays they light her path and keep her safe
In envy he realizes the stars look upon her every night, when she wears the moonlight around her face
With her head resting against a pillow, eyes closed and dreaming things the day can't contaminate.
And he wishes beyond hope he could be there to write them down like a to-do list kept secret from her
Until completed he presents them to her, with a check mark on his own heart to show that it, too, is hers.
But since he cannot do these things he picks up his Americano or Cocomo and takes another sip
And he lets the banging of the drums and deliberate pounding of the guitar put her out of his mind
Until later at night he picks up a pen, half-full with ink, and writes once again about himself
Hoping she'll read each word and fall as in love with him, imperfections, flaws and humanity
As he is with her beauty, words, breath, heart, soul and spirit.

This isn't Paris, there are no lights here
But the stars that sit vulnerably above the dark streets at night.
Reflecting on the drops of rain that fall with no order filling the potholes and cooling the air.
Even the desert gets cold in December, and the cold makes everyone feel lonely.
So here's to the bowl of glitter on my desk.
The letters written that will never be sent.
The twin sized bed unkempt and cold by the window
And the lights that stopped working weeks ago.
To scarves that warm necks and hats that warm heads
While there's nothing to keep my heart from nervously pounding every time the dog barks at night.
Here's to coffee tasting and wrestling over the last brownie,
Friends that become lovers and lovers that stay friends.
The lamplight is dim but it's there all the same
And as long as my shivering hands can type I'll be writing these letters I'll never send.

Please let me write this out
So when my mind drifts to the two of us
Even I can't deny how I'd love to breathe you in.
You are fascinating.
Fuming.
Fearless.
Cold, dense, brilliant and strong.
Dark and deep like a cave.
You're cool like the ocean during a hurricane.
You panic like a raft in the sea
Without a paddle, drifting
Close to shore.
How can I ask you to follow me home
And let me take care of you.
My favorite story
Who knows the ending.
Let me read in peace.
I can't deny that when my mind drifts to the two of us,
We're on an adventure
Somewhere we've never been
Without time or reason.
But that will never be.
Not as long as you sit in a fuming, fascinating
Deep, dark cave
Where I cannot come get you.

You, with your bed of thorns,
Broke the fall from my throne
And tangled me in your chaotic glory.

I'm getting **** tired of people listening to music
Just as a reason to grab another person
And mumble words like they're meaningless obstacles towards your mouth
Doing other things.
Bump some tunes, play the bass loud, so we might not hear our intellects
High shrieks as they wither away into nothing.
And we don't have to look each other in the face
When we decide to own one another like slavery,
Like hate,
Like every other ist that exists to stop us from seeing each other for who we are
Intellects and children of thought
And of accomplishment. And of brotherhood.
And of progress.
Everyone needs to grow up. See the world for the opportunity it is.
And use words like they're pieces of gold.
Priceless.

So I'm back again at sleepless nights, after all the steps I took.
You once again passed through my life without any second look.
Be prepared for disappointment, my mind said that it would come,
But my heart controls my hope and my hope is something I can't numb.
So wide awake I lay here and I wonder what you feel...
Are you empty?... Are you bitter...? Is your soul even real...?
Do you blame me in your heart for what I cannot control...?
Do you even have a heart, or does your chest just have a hole...?
Such a petty waste of time, my mind calls it as it is.
But my heart controls my spirit... and it thinks my spirits his.

He's a California hurricane.
The sunset over Venice Beach.
He's the lights of Los Angeles,
The summer sun
And the gentle rains that blow across to Arizona.
He doesn't need coffee he just wakes to the breeze coming his way.
He's an earthquake and a soda, a busy freeway after morning yoga.
He's 40 million people laughing and crying and building and dreaming all at once.
And he's all mine.

Let's have an affair over thousands of miles.
I know you through the words you've written down,
Which tell me you are equal parts baffled and fascinated
By the billions of minds that make up this crazy, crazy world we live in.
I'm asking you to take off your work uniform slowly and deliberately
So I can see where you've tattooed all of those nights smoking *** and laughing on your chest.
And I promise not to be intimidated by the black spot next to your heart
Inked in fully with the names of every girl you've brought home
And used as a muse those weeknights you just wanted to love something.
I don't fear your short, crisp lines filled with inside jokes you're dying to share
With anyone who isn't you.
I don't fear a little bit of darkness or loneliness.
I only fear that I'll never be able to feel your breath on my neck as we sway back and forth
Cloaked in smoke laying on a bed of aluminum and grease-stained shirts.
Or I'll never be able to run my hand along your chest as your lungs fill up with the sweet smell of rain.
I don't know you, but I like to imagine that you're a cliche ocean of depth and passion
That wants to do right by anyone who will do right by him.
So let's do this, let's have a cross country love affair of the senses
And feel each other like we're just learning what it means to touch.

He said "I'm moving to Ohio.
Won't be long now.
It's a thousand degrees inside of this train and all I got
Is this coffee you gave me.
See you're from this land
With an office, and air conditioning.
And a job.
But all I got is this cup of coffee you gave me."
I said "what's in Ohio?"
He said "nothing. But here I lost $4,000 for smoking some ****.
Just a itty-bitty joint"
Then he motioned with his fingers. No more than the scar on my elbow.
"and that DUI." He adds
Under his breath.
"Yes ma'am. I'm moving to Ohio.
One day I'll see you on the news and I'll say
'I know that girl. She gave me a free cup of coffee, iced.'
And I'll be so proud of you.
I'll say 'I met that girl in a thousand degree train'.
Sure, Ohio ain't no L.A.,
But neither is this place."

We always leave before the sun leaks through the faded curtains
Throwing clothes over our raw skin so the sky doesn't see us.
And you mostly pretend to sleep soundly on the bed, inching towards to crease where I fall asleep.
Because you're okay with leaving.
And because I've done it enough to prefer it.
Dances like ours aren't meant for the light of the day or the twinkle of the stars
But for the pitch black, utter, endless darkness of a windless night.
You are a cold breeze on my otherwise warm afternoon, giving me goosebumps and making me shiver.
Something I haven't decided if I like or not.

I'm writing with unsteady hands
Walking on frozen feet.
Rebellious phase. Changing myself.
Always with the realizations at 1:30 in the morning.
And when I write about waking up to your face it's because I can see it.
Just as it is like a lucid dream.
I smell coffee all over every fantastic moment of existence
Because I'm fairly certain my existence started with you.
You don't know how often I cry, or how loudly I think.
Or that I'm not really a writer. Just a distracted
Addict
To putting myself in characters.
Remembering what my life was, and what it has become.
I don't write I create.
I don't write I remember.
I don't write I dream.
And it's not about me, it's not about you,
It's about everything I've ever wanted it to be but
Was
Am
Too afraid to do
Be.
Become.
Idealism is everything I wasn't but am choosing to aspire to.
With my hair with my eyes with my ears.
I want you to see me the way I see me.
But that's unreliable.

The thing about love
See
Is that it can be everything, and nothing
Everywhere, and nowhere
Too much, and not enough.
All at once.
And it's hard to remember the beauty of the fire
After it burns and maims your skin.
But oh, but oh.
The beauty was there. The fire was there.
And the burn will never truly heal.

She fell in love with words on a page written down like a cry for help.
Because she felt them move inside of her and stop her very heart from beating.
She could feel them hammer into her veins and tiptoe through her brain
As they nested ideas and thoughts into her mind about the man who wrote them.
Like he was sitting somewhere in the dark etching his feelings into the air with his own sweat
She could feel him.
Using only the words he wrote down with the ink he barely had left on the last page of the journal he carries
To and from his days as a student or a business-man, or a drifter. A loner.
Who whispers sweet nothings into the air like a spider's egg explodes into infinity with children
And the wind carries them gracefully to her eyes somehow.
She dreams about the words flowing through her fingertips onto the last page of her journal
That she carries to and from her days as a student, business-woman, drifter. A loner.
She hasn't let one single laugh escape from her lips, or a smile appear on her face.
Not while the words she needs to breathe cling to some forsaken wind across the country
Looking for her in the moonlight, written with an unknown desire to be with her.

All I ever wanted was to be unique
But here I am so replaceable it's disgusting.
To say I'm special is a joke. What makes me special?
You can't find anything in me that you can't find
better
In someone else.
You think you know me.
Think you love me.
Think I'm "different"
For now.
But everyone does at some point.
Then you realize how normal I am.
Like a rainbow it's a trick of the light.
Put me in the dark, you'll see how invisible I really am.
Move me to the darkness, really,
And you'll leave me there.
I'm the lamp you lit then put out and hid away..
I'm that trend you followed that lost it's style.
I'm insignificant.
At least don't lie to me and tell me I'm beautiful.
Don't tell me how special I am, or how I'm better than others.
Better than the other "unique" person I replaced.
I'd sooner die than hear that.
Save myself the trouble that'll come when you make me believe it.
Make me believe my dream came true
My perverse dream came true.

I live in a desert
My Dear.
With a loopy-eyed cat who bites
and a roommate who might as well.
All of my clothes are ripped and stained
and I don't know where I'll be working tomorrow.

The other vagrants and I
We can't afford to stay,
but we can't afford the gas to leave,
either.
The summers are too hot--
the winters are too cold--
and the days and the nights are too dangerous.

But we're here
and we're young.
And someone has to feed the cat.

She wanted him.

Not the him who calls after midnight
from a diner off the freeway
Because he doesn't work for another 12 hours and if she wants to have dinner with him this week
she'll come

But the him who drinks coffee with her in the morning before work
after their alarm told them
they'd slept tangled in each other,
again.

Once said that he was baffled
Yes, flabbergasted,
that in the 6000 years of human existence
In the 6000 years of exorcisms
Crucifixions
******
Bombings
Shootings
Lying
Stealing
K­indness
Love
Mercy
Forgiveness
No one ever prayed for the one
Who needed prayers to most.

'Tis better, they say, to have loved and lost than to have never
Truly
Loved at all.
To love in a way that fans a fire in your soul the likes of which no forest on earth, no volcano on mars
Has ever experienced.
And why love at all?
At the end of every path there's a giant elm tree sticking its bitter head out of the soft, white ground as you coast the ups and downs holding tightly to the reigns
Trying vainly to steer.
There's red in her hair.
And red in the snow beneath you. Around you. Inside of you. Coming from you.
Because.
'Tis better to risk your life to be with her forever than to live in the silence of creaking floorboards
With living martyrs wrapped in wrinkles and pale eyes always on you.
To die.
Together.
Because of love than to live with anything else.
Often you lose. But that's why it's a risk.

Sometimes I find that I am thinking of you
and my eyes drift towards my senses dissapating and
evaporating
in the air like little
wisps
of
smoke
and I can almost catch them in the palms of my hands-
but they instead snuggle around the tips of my fingers and vanish
in the air.
Then I go mad with questions, questions for which I don't know how to answer but by memories,
memories which are countered and argued by speculations.
Did you ever love me?
You said
Yes.
But why, then, did you let me go? Was it because you thought I was already gone,
gone like the little
wisps
of
smoke
that became of my senses?
That I left you?
I did.
I had already bought the coffin for my memories to be buried in with our love.
But you do not control your heart with your mind.
Do you?
No, you do not. You cannot.
Did I ever love you?
I said
Yes.
And I do.
And be mine forever, never let me leave you.
But you did, you bought my ticket and paid the cab.
You hurt me.
But I still long for you.
And just like that my strength vanishes
evaporating
like the little
wisps
of
smoke.
And I wimper like a lost child.
I am a lost child,
find me again, before I elude you
like my fingertips were by the gentle wisps.
Catch me before I fall.