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You keep me in the breast pocket of a heavy winter coat
Tucked away with crumbled receipts
For shaving gel, condoms, and sleeping medication
Hidden close to your heart

You keep me in the pocket of the jeans you keep discarded on the floor
Under collared shirts and a sweatshirt you got from a club you never joined
Damp with the scent of my sweat and poorly made Chinese food
Because playing with you is like playing house, playing me in the kitchen, you in the office
Us in linen sheets

We're harmless
We're impossible (That's what you told me)
We're just a house that's not real, really
And an imagination that I've let run away from me

We're locked away in a box I keep on my desk
On the torn out corner of a note you passed to me from the pocket of your winter coat
We're crammed between ticket stubs and a cherry stem your tongue laced into a knot
In your sloppy cursive, coated with time in my sloppy optimism:
"I love you"
My heart dressed in polka dots and dark shades
Hair and hurt sitting on shoulder blades
Across rose-colored skin,
I brush my fingers over bumps and scarred perfection.

Dance with me in a pit of quicksand, rockabilly babe
And help me understand that I don't need to be afraid

We are children with short attention spans
and short term parents,
and it's apparent, in this short span of time,
I love you.
The first time I smoked a cigarette
I felt the exhilaration of putting it to my lips
Sharp inhalation followed by sputtering coughs
Barely managing to pull in an even breath
Followed by a head rush
My stomach tied in knots and I questioned whether or not I would be sick
But I persisted, and choked it down

Eventually I got used to the taste
I grew to rely on the way my world would stop
My head swam, and time slowed down
My anxious mind was eased, if only for a moment
I craved it more than oxygen

I knew that it would be the death of me
Yet I couldn't walk away
I spent money I didn't have, just to get one more taste
I lost who I was to what I thought I needed

Such was loving you

Time went on and it strangled me
I felt like I could hardly breath

There is no nicotine patch for loneliness
And the nights of missing you still make me shake
But loving you was smoking

**So I quit
Blackbirds chuckling in the arbor vita;
Vultures circling high
Against the blue and Sunday sky;
House sparrows scolding in the neighbors' trees;
A robin chorister brings Dickinson to mind,
And I don't mind.

Sunday morning's breakfast's done,
And we have time
To smile a little...
Bashful mornings
Just a little now
Even after thirty years.

Tomorrow storms will come;
Next week a tree will fall;
Shadows must make their surly steps
Even as sun slides down...
It's just the way this old world runs.

But this morning,
This Sunday morning,
Bright and fine,
I rest from all my worrying,
Rest in the love I have with you,
Amazed again to have,
Amazed to hold,
A girl like you.
Wife love Sunday morning
As this cream and sugar settles,
I'm stirring God into my coffee.
Like honey residue on the sides of my cup,
trickling to trick my tea leaves into leaving a softer story behind.
Essentially, I want
to love what has
never been loved
before

to hold what has
never been hurt
against my heart

to fight death
with my bare
hands

and conquer it
 Mar 2014 Kyle Kulseth
S Smoothie
speaking with you over the frequencies,

I often wonder what a touch could do.

would it connect me to some omnipitent source

or create an annoying buzzing tingle feeling?

I guess I dont need to find out,

but when you walk right through my soul as if its nothing

leaves me with nothing to do but,

wonder about it all.
maybe I like being broken
numb and fine are the same thing
I'm just permanently tired

happiness is exhausting
always having to display it
smiling

I am told I have sad eyes
dead give away
that I'm a liar

but maybe I like being broken
and numb and fine are the same thing
I'm just permanently tired
     she said as she smiled the brightest of smiles with the saddest of eyes
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