I could meet a million people tomorrow
But none of them
Will ever be you
And I hate them for that.

I tried to get through this night
Without your ghost in my bed.
I couldn’t.

I keep having barroom fantasies
Of your stupid, perfect lips
And my hunger for them.
I’m ravenous.

You’ve followed me like
An everlasting echo
That I will never outrun.
I will never find
Someone so utterly divine as you again.
You are nothing more
Than a lucid dream,
But that’s more than I am to you.

His first words to me
asked if she and I were old high school friends.
“We just met.”

All we did was watch and listen.
There was small talk,
but at the first strum
he and I were gone.

I could see him from the corner of my eye,
across the table.
We were just
two bodies,
two drummers’ hearts,
moving rhythmically,
feeling the same thing.
Close, but never touching.
She pulled me away
so I could catch my breath.

I stayed at the back of the room,
above all of the shadows
and the purple lights.
I found him again after it all,
drawn back.
He smiled but his eyes
were just so lost.

He offered stories and questions
and a solo cup of Jameson,
promising something unspoken.
I stained the rim with lipstick
and apologised
but he drank from it anyway.
We drained it, together,
between the shuffling of feet,
the money of strangers,
and his hand on the small of my back.

He asked about my plans for the night
and I couldn’t find the words to say
that I couldn’t think past this moment
with him.
He was every future thought.

He left in a van,
crowded with people,
dragging behind a trailer of cases and guitars,
going somewhere far away.
I left on foot at midnight,
slipping on sidewalk ice,
with a dead phone battery
and a belly full of whiskey.
I fell asleep in my bed,
not knowing how I got there,
but feeling its emptiness
more viciously than usual.

I’ll see him again.

414 days since my unworthy eyes
Were granted the sight
Of your otherworldly grace.
A drop of honey down our throats,
My voice becoming yours,
Yours becoming mine.
Your hands were pale and divine,
Fingernails like beautiful talons:
Capable of pain
Yet used with such gentility.
I have never seen so many flaws
That I love so dearly.
Kissable lips,
Bloodied and quivering,
Illuminated by streetlights.
You want my heart
But I ask for it back.
A man of chivalry,
Your quiet intentions confuse me,
And I can’t stand the sight of your
Butterfly eyelashes
And nervous mumblings.
You are so capable of tearing me apart
And I want you to,
But you won’t.
Countless doubts between us,
You could argue my declaration
Of your angelic being,
But you won’t.
You are hidden smiles
And anxious hands
And an otherworldy grace I am unlikely
To ever see again.

He cradled my heart
Between the lines etched into his youthful palms;
It quivered
And he whispered lullabies to calm it’s ache.
He filled my lungs with the ocean separating us,
A slow, soothing suffocation.
Saltwater desiccated me from the inside out
Until I was perfectly preserved for him.

Five hours too late or
Five hours too early;
He wanted to take me for coffee
In the middle of the night.
I would have walked on water
To know his embrace.

I was a slave to his lilted tongue;
He was a slave to his blood’s desires.
He begged for the release of his own grip.

Like a gust of sea air,
He vanished as quickly as he had arrived
And relinquished his hold on me.

My therapist told me
To make a *** of coffee or tea
When Anxiety acted up.
She said that just the sensation
Of a warm mug in my hands
Could work wonders.
This room is full of cold cups,
Littering every windowsill
And every dusty bookshelf.

lips stained with pomegranate juice,
i want to kiss every inch of you;
temporary tattoos to remind you of me.

I was writing this poem
In your arms.

Six feet beneath you;
You look like a god to me.
Everyone else is on level ground.

I was writing this poem
In the arms of your brother.

It seems as though his body
Was molded especially to fit my own.
He smiled when you didn’t.

I was writing this poem
In the arms of all your friends.

There were no introductions.
I’ll forget them first.
Nice boys, sweet boys.

You close your eyes
When you cower in the corner.
This man, this man isn’t you.
Dry mouths and too much scotch;
Animals for an evening.
Dreams of Edinburgh shattered,
Depression awoken by the bitter air of Los Angeles.
Where do you belong anymore?

Dull sandpaper,
Worn away by these city lights
But you can’t stop.
Surrounded by thousands and
You’re lonely,
Just like the rest of us.
I see those quiet tears.

I was writing this poem
In your arms,
In the arms of your brother,
In the arms of all your friends.

Don’t ask me to choose
Because I won’t.

Could you love me?
No, of course not.
Your spirit is reckless and wild,
And no lover's touch could tame you.

You stay up all night just to watch the sun rise.
You're too late.
You fall in love with long-legged women
In cities you're just passing through.
You howl at the sun,
Begging for rebellion.
We know you better than you do.
You long for a hand to hold,
A hand to release you,
A hand to pull you from the edge,
And hand to push you off.

Maybe you could love me.
But I could not love you enough
To let you go.

All these years and I don’t think you would
Remember my name.
You struggled with it;
It didn’t fit quite right on your tongue,
A tongue accustomed to the ghost of another language.
But to me, of course,
Every word you spoke
Was gospel.
You’ve done something wicked to me.
No man may take my hand
Without a silent comparison made.
You were my very own Aengus,
And none may live up to that.

I shouldn’t still remember the curve of your waist.
I shouldn’t still long to hear my name on your lips
Again.
I shouldn’t still long to say yours
In the dead of night
When I can recognise by the rise and fall of your chest
That you aren’t yet asleep.

I shouldn’t still be stuck in this reverie.
But I am.
Of course I am.

There is a low sheet of fog in the field across the way
And I am reminded of that afternoon.
We all remember it, but we don’t speak of it.
I dug up the grass with my bare feet
Running full-fledged somewhere, nowhere.
The holes served as a reminder during the weeks to come.
I collapsed and beat the ground until my fists
Were bruised and I had frightened the birds away.
I screamed out a sob but made no sound,
And I prayed for the day to end
And for you to survive it.
I begged and pleaded under my breath
In a language I didn’t understand.
I stared at the blank sky until I sensed darkness,
And went back inside
To my bed and my photographs and a phone call.
That was the day that I ceased believing in God.

I am not a saviour.
You won’t find absolution
In my arms.
Cowardly hands
Write cowardly words
That you will never read.
My love burned quickly,
Fiercely,
And extinguished itself.
It couldn’t sustain
Its own passion.
There are still echoes of you in my heart
But they’ll fade out
Eventually.
You forget how easily voices are forgotten
When the intimacy is gone.
Secondhand smoke
Still does damage, though.
My breath quivers just as much as yours.
I can’t pull you from the wreck
That I myself am trapped beneath.
There is no winner here.
The stale words on yellowed letters
Hold no depth.
They make better tinder
Than literature.
The angel wings you thought I had
Are nothing more than crow’s feet.
I am not your saviour.

A loose arm draped across my abdomen,
Clutching me like I am a childhood teddy bear,
With one eye missing
Because you loved me too much.
In the morning,
Sleepy shuffling of slippers
To hot coffee between palms.
Shared kisses to sweeten the deal,
Tasting of hazelnut and cinnamon,
We are untouchable.
Out in the cold,
Your hand in my ever-freezing hand,
The wind turning our cheeks the most lovely shade of pink
And we’re so quiet
That not even the trees can hear us.
Soft, slow kiss on the lips before I go
And I will think of you all day,
Until I am in your arms again.
The cycle repeats,
And the coffee never runs out.

The world is crumbling around me,
And you want to turn it into poetry.

You won't pick up the phone
Because you don't want to hear my voice.
Baby, my voice is all that's left.
It's the only hope I have,
The only way to make it out alive.
So clueless behind a keyboard, so far away.
If you could see how somber this city is,
How loveless, how grey,
Maybe you'd pick up the phone.

If everything collapses,
I'm going down with it.
God knows you won't lend a hand.

I walk this path alone,
Like I always have,
Only this time
It ends at the lake
And I keep walking.
Maybe I'll find you down there
Among the shipwrecks:
My own Benedict Arnold.

Please pick up the phone.

The soles of my feet have been cemented
To the same plot of land
For years now.

They have offered me my freedom,
A chance to disappear,
But it’s only a concept, isn’t it?

I can unhinge myself from these walls
If I pay a pretty penny.
I’ve never seen green;
Only red.

A chance to earn
What I should be given
Is never allowed,
Because I can’t earn
That pretty penny
Without paying
A pretty penny.
That’s how this all works.

This is all my fault.

The soles of my feet have been cemented
To the same plot of land
For years now
And I’m sinking
Quickly.

We were all just lost souls trying to see where we fit.
We were looking for a place to settle down,
A place to call home.

We pretended to love one another,
Rallied together against the boringness of the same old town.
With each passing day we had less to talk about.
We resented each other more the longer we were together.
We created drama out of nothing just to ease our psyches.

Half of them got drunk every weekend just to have a story on Monday,
Made **** jokes and then said **** culture doesn't exist.
A few started doing ****** in the woods;
It was cheap, it was easy,  it numbed the chronic loneliness.

I told my best friend that in six months I would never see him again.
He agreed.

We all said we'd get out when we got the chance.
Only a few of us did.

I can’t come crawling back
With the skinned-up knees of a child.
You are the bicycle I’ve forgotten how to ride.
Can’t you see how dangerous you’ve become?

My heart has grown too big for the space I’ve allotted it.
You take up too much room.
It thrashes and throbs against its cage,
Enraged, defeated, sobbing.

You’re always so far away from us.

I can’t drag myself away from this hell.
Fifteen years has worn my joints to dust.
The sea air stings.
I need summer grass and chamomile tea in the sunshine.
Can you give it to me?

Don’t let me take your hand.
Don’t let me kiss the nape of your neck, the curve of your lips.
Don’t let me fade into you.
I’ll never be wholly myself ever again.

They told me to take caution.
Boys like you make a mess out of girls like me.
Splatter me across the wall like a bucket of paint when you're upset.
I'll submit.

I have been wrapping myself tighter around your finger
With each passing week of your silence.
Maybe one day I will sever it
And you will feel me then.

Run, they told me. Run.
I could never bring myself to do it fully.
My shoes were wrong, I ran out of breath;
I ended up tired and sore.

I told myself that I was done.
But then you came back,
With your tears and your grasping hands,
And I crumbled beside you.

I cannot bear to see your suffering,
And you know this to be true.
We both know that you pretend
Not to see mine.

Reality or reverie,
We burn the candle at both ends
Until nothing remains.
Balancing on city curbs, hand in hand;
A listless distraction.
Where does this train stop?
Spider-silk eyelashes catch the light
Of the sparks between our fingertips.
We burn out our corneas with ease
And suffer through the pain
Of our poetry and our freedom.

This house feels so very small.
I can still count the number of steps in the dim-lit stairway.
I can still find the light switch with my eyes closed.
But this is only a vague familiarity.
I keep dropping the bath towel
Stepping into the shower
Because I anticipate a hook
That is no longer there.
The light echoes differently here.
I’d forgotten how it feels
To wake up at 3am,
Shivering.
I’d forgotten just how thin these walls are.
I didn’t even know that there was a lock on the bedroom door.
I learned it quickly.
I won’t forget the sound of fists pounding against cracked wood.

My comfort is in
The line of empty beer bottles by my bedside
And a foreign voice on the phone,
Reminding me that this will all be over soon.
The only thing that’s certain
Is that my home isn’t here anymore.

my heart is beating out of my chest.
i am lonely but in love.
i have no hands to hold nor lips to kiss
and yet i rejoice in an empty bed.
i long for him, an ocean away,
and yet too far from my thoughts.
two years and a decade too late.
i crave the solitude of an irish cottage,
thought i cannot help myself in wondering
if i’d be happier with him there.

I’ve known a handful of ethereal people,
And I’ve watched them all walk away
Into another light, into their own worlds.

They were dreams with crooked teeth

And carefree wisdom in their palms.

They had me placing my heart at their feet,
And just laughed and kissed my cheek
With eternal lips.

Now that I’ve had a tiny taste,
How can you expect me to be satisfied
With this lackluster life
And these lackluster people?

They drip down walls,
Melt into asphalt
And seep into the earth,
Unnoticed.
Cities full of similar shapes,
And I will pick them out of the crowd
Every single time.
I do not need to see anything else.
I will always recognise the biggest mistake I ever made.

A time zone or two
And an ocean of blue
Keep us from holding our breath.
We’re fire and ice, you and I,
Can’t you see?
Longing for warmth,
Melting too quickly.
My suffering ends
And your depression begins.
My happiness fades
And yours starts anew.
I’m always down
And you’re always up,
Or it’s the other way ‘round.

But I’m still so in love with you.

I brewed a *** of coffee
And drank it all
In half-hour intervals
Beginning at 9pm
And ending at 10:30.
It was just enough
To keep me from sleeping;
To keep me from dreaming about you.

If you can sleep at night
With your past behind you
And your future ahead,
What is left to dream about?

come back
come back
come back
prove to me that there is something here worth fighting for

i've lost count of the days without you
seasons change without you
we've all got something that we're fighting for
it was only ever you