Someone doesn't have to die
For you to lose them.

The last I love you was a waste of breath
that I'm sure I'll be missing as I lie
down on my deathbed
yearning for
one
more
second.

The year is 2095.
Religion is black and gold.
Reciting prayers are now the only way you can sleep, and all the conversations you had with others that never involved moving your mouth,
and I believe people smoke cigarettes because there is a salvation in being able to stop parts of you from growing that do not know how to do anything else. It occurred to me that we make everything before we even see it, and that is how extensive beauty spreads, it exists without acknowledgement, yet it is always there.

I woke up without my senses, not knowing the flavor of the string which holds these
linnens afloat on the laundry
of life's backyard, but I know it was where it was supposed to be, as most things are.
I do not believe in phantoms but I believe that when asking questions, there is always a response.
The world answers you back every time, and although
I have yet to understand the dust found between its proverbs that
I assume was beaten out of old rugs and woven from cobwebs.
What else is there?
I am constantly torn between being lost and being alive and looking for the difference.
Constantly torn between loving where you live, and trying to become
I found so many ways to be, that I never spent the time looking for ways to understand.

The humor flies right over heads,
Like leaves off trees much too overgrown.
Quick to shoot and stab in darkness,
Naked kitchen table manners,
Plastic flaccid people actors,
Vacant star shaped locket
Picture frames a blackmail recipient.
Forget your names for heavens sake.
Preface to my new face in tastelessness,
Fragrant little boomer baby.

and i am eleven again
feeling like tomorrow
is a couple yesterday's ago
smothered in cayenne pepper
hot enough to take off taste buds
and tonight i am eating a meal
only worth burning
it tastes like my parents anniversary
it tastes like a zinfandel
left on the counter too long
it's a bad story, see
there's no silverware
'cause my mom sold it
to keep the lights on
and somewhere in heaven
somebody in a suit
doing commentary
on this fiasco
is telling someone else
in a suit that
"you have to eat love with your hands"
so we sit, four plates on the table
for the two of us
my brother's long gone
dad's even further away
& he's not the one who's buried
i carry both their names like anchors
that i cannot unmoor from
while she looks at the empty table
and says something about the news
she says something else
but she's not talking
we aren't proud of this, see
my dad likes to wax his car
he's proud of it
and my mom says
she sees a lot of him in my hands
says, i touch the things i find
like they didn't belong
to people sleeping in the ground
she says i touch photo albums
the same way-
you know,
i never used to believe
that history could repeat itself
not until i could
fast forward seventeen years
and still wake up to smoke alarms
how i would go into our kitchen
to find it empty
and the dinner smoldering
& my mother in her bedroom
looking through family photos
like it's a just another summer day
and the sirens are just the birds
i don't ask, i never say a word
in this moment
i am an archeologist
afraid to dig up the past
cause history repeats itself-
you see
my brother is dead
and my father is gone
they have been for some years now
and my mother
sometimes forgets
and sets their place at the table
like they're still here
and in the confusion
ends up ankle deep
in pictures of how it used to be
she let's dinner burn
and douses it in red pepper
hoping i won't know the difference

I'm miles away from home
The air is colder
The people unfamiliar
But for some reason
I feel a sense of purpose
I think I'm closer to finding
You

i love you this morning
it's a come home safe morning
fog on the road
& no seatbelt kind of morning
the sun is over easy
& nothing's on fire
there's punctuation
where i don't want it
and extra love
in the glovebox of my car
been thinking about being honest
how these poems are all me
but they tell the story
how someone else
might believe it happened
within reasonable doubt
no copy & pasted love letters
no 'who ever says hello first gets my attention for the day'
try a little tenderness
in my ears and today
there are instruments
in the back of my head
i think you love me
because i'm sunburned
felt it in a 'come hell or high water' kinda way, that 'touched from far away' kinda way that 'if i touch this piano one more time one of us is going to break' kinda way
and i drove over 17 bridges yesterday and today i'll do it again
and i think nobody gets
what that means except maybe you
i just tell them i love the scenery
that somebody must've made
these trees blush just for me
you know how i love
to change the subject
i bet they'd love the view
i bet you would too
and all these metaphors
for other things are beside the point
this is a metaphor
for why i don't wear my seatbelt
a metaphor for why whiskey
knows me better than you
could ever try to
all the buildings seemed to sag yesterday and all the stars
are doing that cliche thing
where they talk
quiet jet noise
& some lumbering giant
made everything shake
not those hand metaphors
not another one of those
& keep the sea to yourself
i think it was a train
it's sound hugged the embankment
for a moment
and then trailed off into nowhere
and that's kind of like me
how there's a town called 'rescue'
close to my home &
it's no coincidence
that i've never been there