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LostinJapan Aug 2016
You only like me when I'm someone else.
LostinJapan Aug 2016
No one is more skilled
at twisting words,
care,
desire,
vulnerability,
and love
into barbed wire.
LostinJapan Aug 2016
I'm listening to the rain outside and wondering why it is that every time I reached out you dissolved like smoke between my fingers. Too many nights of misunderstood signals and mistakes. I should have known from the first moment that we were doomed to repeat the pattern of being exactly in the same place yet missing each other by feet that could have been light years. My mind caresses the ridges of your key, the curve of your laugh, the edges of our pain. I wish I could travel back to Kaminarimon or those back alleys of Golden ***. I'd throw wine glasses on the floor and scream 'I love you' when you could still hear it. And now you're distracted and there isn't the tiniest flicker of hope I'll find you looking my direction. Even with a flashing sign stabbed through my heart dedicating it to you. Even with other people whispering that I follow you around like a leaky shadow with my soul in a jar. Even though you could. You very well could. Your whole gaze must be filled up with red and green and just...her. Beautiful, wonderful, mesmerizing, world-changing her. Sometimes I've wondered if I could still taste you on her if I asked, if she didn't mind. And when I close my eyes, I can almost remember what you tasted like on me.

*Almost.
LostinJapan Aug 2016
It is dark and damp
in the alley under your window.
My dreaming is so quiet,
and my body so still,
that a man relieved himself,
unaware, on my paradise.

You may be sleeping,
or reading,
or gaming,
but my thoughts aren't on the you above.
I'm sometime else.

At this point, in this place,
we start and end journeys.

I see us
walking hand in hand
that first night
and all the nights.

I see me
bringing soup when you are sick,
scribbling love letters in the cold,
hiding gifts before you appear,
and yes...crying here too.

I see you
stopping and turning at your doorstep,
smiling and brushing your lips on my forehead,
and a thousand times I am whole.

Please don't come outside.
Don't put down your iPad
or walk downstairs.
I won't be able to explain my tears,

and

*I never want to make the memory
of your not wanting me here.
This experience deserved a better poem
LostinJapan Aug 2016
If death were as simple as a Dominos easy button,
I'd be stripping down for the delivery boy.

It is hot and quiet.
Mountains of chocolate wrappers surround me,
every bit as empty as I am filled with failure.

I am thirty-six years missing an idea,
fifty pounds of destructive attempts to make sense of it,
five hundred sixteen heartbroken poem disasters,
and a longing for love that drives everyone to the opposite end of the universe.

At light speed.

You'll be gone eventually too.
I'll cry,
but I won't feel anything.
LostinJapan Aug 2016
I stare at the ceiling
drained
by all the things I didn't do
Tasks and obligations are notecards
wedged between collections of thoughts
slowly taking up space on my shelf
until nails give and wood splinters
Favors are rough, leathery bookmarks
dominating Bible-thin planner pages
straining and bending
until schedules fan out
in a fat, perfect circle
of endless anxiety
LostinJapan Aug 2016
Overwhelmed by helpless disappointment,
      I reach inside my ciphers
And offer bouquets
     of worthless apologies.
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