It's still you.
And the days feel like years when i'm alone.
Even the leaves fall for you.

I want to feel you breathe
I want to feel the way you laid next to me
Through the night, the weight of the world
On your shoulders but you were the one
Telling me it would be alright
Your words whispered in my ear,
Sweet nothings blinding me
To what I should've seen coming
What I could've seen coming
Now the wind howls through my hair,
And the dirt beneath me turns to mud
If I would've asked, would you have stayed?
Pain and blame smother me like a blanket
Stifling my cries
Rain falls like tears from my eyes,
Whispering the sounds of goodbyes that
I never got to say,
The memory of you shall never fade,
Even when these lonely nights
Turn into lonely days

I can only think of you.
I try to think of others.
I think about their hair.
About their eyes.
I don’t see them however.

Instead I see your smile.
It takes hold my heart.
Like a bear trap takes a leg.
It strikes my soul bright.
Like lightning splits trees.
Breath.
I try again.

I’m out with them.
Everyone else.
It doesn’t matter though.
Because behind all their jokes you dance.
Before all their stories you tread.
They aren’t you.

I talk about them too.
Try to make them more.
Try to make you less.
It makes your size greater however.
Making the chance you might crush me.
Even more a possibility.

So I can only think of you.
Can only imagine the most dazzling beginnings.
See a love all try not think about, else they become jealous.
Pictures on a coffee table illustrating a full life together.
Glimpse adventure with a laugh.
As your enormity crushes me.

A stem is gone,
The leaves won’t shiver,
As the wind swirl around

A portrait that is blank,
A sky, austere as dust
Sprinkle on the blue view

Of your eyes that see no stem,

That holds petals
And leaves,
That won’t quiver,

Because the earth is wrinkled.

Before,
Chaos reigned each day
The ground quaked with the weight
Of every fresh pursuit
Such debt I've yet to pay
For years of inane deeds
I explored man to excess
Until all thought turned towards lust
An insatiable beast that feeds
Upon its eager flesh
I craved things evil and benign
(For both I wished to feel)
Though now they are malignancies,
That no human eye could find
But just as storms will peak
And give way to idle skies
My story is now a fragment
- nothing more to seek
Though plateaus are pleasing
To walk upon at times
Extended paths exhaust the mind
Just as anything unceasing

(I sometimes shake my memories
when they find themselves twisted
& highly vivid)*

this way—
no that;
I want to remember the way
your hair felt entwined in my hungry fingers—

you were sitting there beneath the tree under which I had grown for nearly 1500 days,
but you had taught me more than all of those years
in just two fortnights’ time.

I remember how chilled your face felt—
how the evening looked so good on you
(you always had such sad eyes, you know,
& the moonlight fed them in ways you never realized you hungered for).
I was there for a day or so,
just enough for me to trip (& fall),
just enough for you to push me over the edge.

I don’t quite know what brought us there that night,
halfway between you wanting to go home
& me never wanting to leave your side,
but I held my hand on your face, in your hair,
waiting with all certainty that you would wrap your arms around my waist,
drawing me in to let me
breathe you in.

(how sad I was to have such faith,
& how sad you were to have none at all.)

these days, you’ve cut your hair
(perhaps the memories of my lingering fingers weighed you down,
a blanket too warm for the season),
& I don’t even recognize your casual howareyous
(the ones that used to keep me up at night & early into the Texas sunrises;
do you remember those, too?).
no—
instead I see them for what they are:
casual.

so as I lay here in lace & nostalgia,
in the very place we once whispered our desires to each other,
& my hands so heavy with all the things I’ve gathered for our next conversation,
I will instead empty my palms, and,
like you,
release what burdens so heavily.