When she drinks,
she tip toes right through that
line;
into a different state altogether.
A train barreling towards her
comes to a squealing focus.
There is danger everywhere
in the silence.
Someone poked a hole in her bubbly head
but everything was going so well.
So well.
Oh, well on the rocks it is.

I don't watch ****.
You're more likely to see me squirreling away pictures of elaborate bathtubs, in shame.
Sometimes,
in the still of the night,
I look up well thought-out Murphy-beds and closets that disappear into secret home offices.
I keep a hidden stash of blackout poems
and lewd photos of street artistry around my neighborhood.
I savor notes my best friend gave me during middle school.
I walk a crooked walk down to the seedy underbelly of my past
and read feverishly all my past feelings and relive them to remember how vivid they once were.
But,
just like ****,
in watching and re-watching and savoring all the same flavors
everything tastes like mud now.

"It's not me!" she broke in, hands still shaking,
heart still trying to headbutt through her rib-cage.
"SHUT UP! I don't know you!", she screamed at the wall of her bedroom,
panting.
Making memories right then and there.
Born like stars in the darkness.
Dreams that let loose into the silence of the real world like breaking through glass.
Dreams to make the grown men weep in panic.
Dreams to drink an extra cup of coffee for,
on your way to work.

I watched it run out,
like a recording where the film just flips,
over and over again.
The dull empty clicking of a machine without purpose,
and white empty all-filling space.

This.
This my difficulty I can never show in public.
My shame.
My family name tarnished on a pause.
A stumble.
A fumble forwards towards the right answer that won't come tumbling out of me.
So I wait.
I wait for a crack in the seams; a break in the watch.
A moment to breathe where I can escape away from the responsibility of knowing.
Knowing what is to others obvious.
The poetry of integers,
the finger-tips of legacy I may never grasp.

my friends,
write big letters on big pages,
filling magazines.
we make the summers
look like golden lit kerosene
and trail in conduct laden rows
off to our cozy little homes
where we make life a little rougher
for the souls that came before

such a silly little episode
she left her coat,
and we all grabbed it
and held it fairly close
until she finally stumbled up
all the stairs that we drew up
all those cozy little homes.

say that you remember,
late november,
late autumn or early winter,
when the changes weren't much

Say that you recall that fading fall
when we thought that we are all
the happiest we'd ever be.

She broke the bottle over our heads
and the milk mingled with the blood.
That's how one feeds monsters.
The fingernails dig in deep and pull out threads of fabric.
It might have held the world instead of bled, she said
But I can't toe the line of a killer.