what do you do when you never knew life without it? when i am not what happened, but who would i be without it? when theres a certain pleasure to every drop of pain? i will always be rolling under waves of whiskey and wondering what the world looked like through these same eyes before. i tell my psychiatrist “when i spill red wine, i always see what could have been, what’s that mean doc?” but he only ever nods and scribbles a new prescription for another bottle of the same merlot no matter how many times i tell him that it tastes just like when i was seven and my mother tucked me in. i drink it anyways, of course, because i want to feel seven again until i’m back under the quilt my grandma made me with a hand over my mouth. i live here now, in this space between me and everything i've ever known. its not here that it happened, but its here that i remain.

there’s a place i want to take you, a few years back. we could watch from the start. it goes a lot like this: we spread a blanket and lay down to look through each other. a train drives through and we’re stuck on opposite sides of the rails, screaming and fighting and crying until the train stops and we stare some more, realizing there was never really anything there. we laugh. “i started running a few years after that and somehow i arrived at the intersection between his hands and the other side of the bed. i dreamt of this one night, truly, i rolled over and woke up under the stars, in all their glory, but they shone a little to bright and i saw it again. the shoulders and the bruises, oh the bruises. they always burned a beautiful color of plums and that red wine he claimed to love so much. i always knew he was lying about that. the way the corner of his lips crawled up his cheeks, desperate for some distance from his slick tongue. that always gave him up.” i’ll explain how i’ve tried to forget the running, but “what am i without it?” i’ll weep while laughing and then squeeze my eyes closed the way he did with his fists and wait to see if i can piece together a memory of what i will never be again. when i wake up i’ll realize i was never really asleep and you were never really there, just like the train we fought so passionately about. my soul’s worn weary from every moment i’ve spent pounding my feet into the trails i carved into my skin dedicated to creating a road map to the center of **** knows what. “i want to go back to the fire i lit, burning sweet nothings, and thank god, oh thank god i’ll find my way back if i trace the tracks on my body.” i will explain to you how i considered changing my name and running a little further. “maybe somewhere the people will worship me, maybe i can be someones messiah and flood their city with my tainted blood. bleed me dry, i will cry out to a crowd of fools.” you’ll cry too, but i want you to watch.

morning brings me immense joy. i like the silence of it all. yes, let me sit in the heap of unquenched thoughts i’ve been driving by my whole life. i’m in a coping place. it is now that i sit here, somewhere between the tenses, staring at what may or may not be. i’m not tied to any fate. a vagabond of soul and sea. i run where i can become anew. a phoenix of sorts, where i set my world on fire, then reincarnate somewhere far away. at least in that story a certain beauty is retained. i read once that people get comfortable in the monotony and extinguish their only source of heat. the currency of life.

we speak through lyrics of songs not written yet and fight in poems that have never been spoken. you’ll sit in the corner of the dark vacancies of my memory and i’ll ask you to watch a home film of the hands, the bruises and the beginnings. there’s a smack and a thud and you will almost be able to smell the whiskey. i’ll shiver and offer you a smoke. theres a soundtrack of silent bids for the finale. at the end i’ll tell you the story of something good, something to distract you from the catharsis i’ll feel. i’ll explain how “i don’t know what i am and i think theres something inside of me that will never leave ill explain it all i promise i will but now i need to sleep for a while” but i don’t think we’ll see each other after that. i like to play this game of cat and mouse where i pour my soul into something innocent and stand by to watch it evaporate; i like to know that nothing ever wins the game and i am not the only one who slips into the fallacy of memory.

everything was over and i saw you leave your body for a little while when the ghost filled you up it was like i didn’t know you it was like no one did you were an abandoned house and i was a visitor with spray paint who wanted to live forever and now i do through you i marked you but you're too strong to admit that you lost part of yourself that day and i did too and im too weak to try to tell you you’ve changed and perhaps it has nothing to do with me but you haven’t been the same since that day when i unlocked the cell of my old friend and decided to let it run wild again and i turned the stones into the deepest shade of maroon and watched what was left of myself drain down my thighs staining the flesh of nature and driving a wedge between me and the world i always thought it would be fun to be an astronaut but now there’s no need i’ve been miles away from this place since that day when the sky turned the color of the bags under my eyes and you became the thing that i can’t seem to shed from my thoughts it’s the morning and i’m waking up and look in the mirror and see what you said mattered for so long what you say matters but i know you don’t know you haven’t seen my soul you haven’t gone on a deep sea dive through the matter of my body if you had you’d only find the pills and potions that have kept me breathing even when i tried to make it stop and today is an anniversary celebrating the year i have lived this lie and still haven’t found the secret to being happy

it's an undeniable pull, you know
the gravity in my world feels heavier than others.
i spread my roots outward.
never upward.
vertical mobility is a myth
where i'm from. you start

the same place you finish;
mind-numbing ****** jokes.
go to the bar down the road.
order your bottle with a glass on the side.
fear the unimaginable, but somehow
let your experiences inform your imagination.
pour your bottle, play your song from the
“vintage” jukebox filled with Usher’s singles.
smile and wave. return to monotony.

drowning on
the shallow end
of the pool
dodges laughter by
a single fiber of moral decency.
even the most cruel characters of the story
know how to act decent. it's human.
but falling into the cyclical
****** of an unhinged routine
is unnatural? i guess so.