I could give you my words,
but I know you wouldn't understand them.

So I keep them inside
until
my internal organs
have been digested
by the carnivorous words
written
in Times New Roman
because when you have something to say
the font doesn't matter.

As a shell of pale skin,
I had no choice
but to end everything with you
and write about it
in Times New Roman.

I knew you wouldn't
understand
which is precisely why
I wrote this poem.

It was a rainy November night-
it always seemed to be.
There was nothing to do
but drink through our cheap red wine
until our words sloshed together.

Sure, it was slowly killing us,
slowly drowning our livers.
But there was something about the drinking
that made us feel more alive than
anything.

We worked until we had a few bucks,
the few bucks turned into a bottle.
There was never more money,
but there was never not enough.
It wasn't paycheck to paycheck
but bottle to bottle.

Eventually we'd sing Billy Joel
or the Beatles,
happy to have each other,
but even happier to have the wine.

The rain continued on,
the wine continued on,
and our lives-
well, they continued on, too.

She said “hello”
as brightly as the first rays of sun
in the early morning,
a small smile peeking out
from under her sun hat
like the sun peeking over the horizon.

I felt my body begin to warm
as her words reached out and touched me,
just before her hand brushed my own.

She was intense like the heat of the sun at noon,
her beauty causing me to shield my eyes
yet seducing me
to take another quick look.

She said “goodbye”
as crisply as the cool night air,
the two syllables sobering me up
just the same.

She held her sun hat in her delicate hand,
fading away
like midnight fades into the gray morning.

My sky was dark
and your light was too dull.

The sky was darkening and the windows were lighting.
She wore clean clothes and she had a key tied to her white shoelace,
yet she wandered the poorly lit streets
while families ate roasted chicken and peas and drank milk.

She wasn't hungry, wasn't thirsty, wasn't tired.
In spite of these facts, she wasn't content, either.
She still had a reason to roam the streets,
a reason to like the dark sky more than the lighted windows.

She wasn't alone, of course.
There were others, probably, wandering the streets,
but she didn't want to find them.
At this hour, the streets were meant to be meandered in solitude.

I ******* hate how writing means so much to me
when it means nothing to you.

It's my ******* heartbeat,
it's my lungs carefully breathing in and out,
it's that part of my brain telling me to live.

I would die without it,
don't you see that?

The sky is dark,
my room is dark,
and, hell, my thoughts are dark.

It's 3:09 a.m.
My pillow is hard,
my blankets are too warm.
The wristwatch on my nightstand
is ticking too loudly.

The sky is dark,
like I said before.
No stars tonight,
no stars any night.