He says,
"I don't know what to do with this. What is wrong with us.."
And I stare at the text like I'm waiting for it to disappear.
Waiting for it to be unsaid.
Don't say it.
Please.. just..
don't say it.
Give us five more minutes.
Five more minutes to feel it.

Then we won’t.
Because then I'll say,
"I know.. I'm not sure.. we don't have to do anything with it."
Because what I want to say,
isn't what you want to hear,
I know that,
and I can feel you waiting for me on the other end,
maybe sitting at a red light,
or glancing down briefly while you merge onto 84..
waiting to see if I go there.
Don't worry,
I won't.
You don't want that.
So, I'll respect that..
I say,
"We don't have to do anything about it.
We don't have to do anything.. at all."
The disappointment is palpable,
even through the air waves that carry those fateful words.
Because then you respond with,
"Good, yeah. Let's keep it uncomplicated."
And I tell you that's fine.
Of course it's fine.
Because that first text didn't disappear.
It wasn't left unsaid.
So here we are,
agreeing to be something we're not.
Agreeing to ignore something we are.
So it goes.

I think he may be right,
the boy that calls once a year,
five years too late.
I think he's right.
About fighting to love
and be loved,
only to be remembered
by that unheard voicemail,
that “missed call” notification.
Those photographs we didn’t keep,
and the stories we stopped telling
long before it was their time to be forgotten.
It shouldn’t be fair,
the forcible forgetting of the nights
they spent asking me to try harder
begging me to love them just a little bit more..
It shouldn’t be fair,
that I was so quick to say no
so quick to shut down
so quick to refuse such simple requests.
It shouldn’t be fair..
But they should be honored,
all the boys that exist now,
only as black and white adjectives
in simplified prose.
Penned only during the loneliest hours
when the world is dark
and the nightmares are calling.
It should be an honor,
being buried in the worn pages of
these Moleskin graveyards..  
After all,
poems are where all great love stories go to die.

I thought I'd quit smoking
to be a better woman..
My mother always told me
it wasn't something pretty girls did..
until about three beers in
when she would ask to borrow a light
and say,
"It's great that you think that shirt is flattering,
but maybe a size up would be more.. comfortable."
And I thought I'd quit smoking
to be a better lover..
Because it "wasn't ****" to keep a lighter
in the back pocket of my jeans,
and it "gave off the wrong vibe about me"
and I always tasted like smoke..
Then, I thought I'd quit smoking
to be a better person, I guess..
Because I moved to the suburbs,
made friends with other moms,
who got wine drunk on Tuesdays,
and talked about nail salons,
playdates,
and brunch.
So I thought I'd quit smoking
to live longer, they said.
Because the warning was printed
and the science was in..
and the only thing,
they said for certain,
was that cigarettes killed.
But my mother found new criticisms,
and that boy left anyway,
The suburbs were terrible
and people I loved died regardless.
So, I realized,
**** that.
and opened a new pack.

"You can't always win, L."
he says.
He always says that,
the boy from Ohio with the lopsided grin,
"Sometimes, you just lose..
and that's okay."
Emphasis on the "okay".
Because he knows
that's the one word
I won't hear him say.
He knows this,
because he always says it.
When I tell him,
I don't feel right, where I am.
And it's worked before.
So it should work now,
he thinks to himself.
And perhaps if I were sitting next to him,
like I used to,
in that one room apartment,
in Victorian Village,
I would hear it.
I would hear it,
and it would resonate.
Before he punched me in the arm
and asked if I was done being dramatic,
so we could turn on the game,
because he just got a text that OSU is down by 7,
and he's pretty sure it's because he's not watching..
So I would laugh,
shove him off the couch I got at Goodwill,
and he would grab two more PBRs from my fridge
that only sometimes worked,
and it would be okay.
It would.
Because to the sound of him yelling at Braxton Miller
through the tv
like he could actually hear him,
and the hot summer breeze pouring through the open windows,
it made sense.
What he said,
made sense.
But we're not in that apartment,
and he can't hear how hard my is heart beating
from 700 miles away,
can't see the look on my face
when I tell him I think I'm losing my ******* mind.
Suddenly his voice sounds so far
and so foreign.
And he knows,
he knows it's not working this time
but that's the farthest he ever got
so that's as far as he goes.
And the long pause is deafening.
So in one final act of desperation
he simply says,
"Love you, kid."
And I just say,
"I know."

I knew a woman once,
with worn couches,
and gentle words,
that would describe me as doe-eyed and wild-hearted,
though no one would ever notice that again.
And she told me that my body should be thought of
as a work of art,
instead of a shameful relic.
I thought that over for awhile,
the idea that the scars I had accumulated
over the course of this lifetime
could be considered beautiful.
And I began to paint my canvas
with beautiful things,
stories of past loves,
past lives,
the places I had once considered home..
So I painted birds across my back,
in honor of my wandering heart,
and the daydreams I had as a child,
of being free.
Inscribed words on my ribs,
from the book that had once so closely
resembled my own soul
I truly believed that they had been written for me.
And you.
I painted you,
my love,
on my shoulder,
as a dragon,
for all the nights we spent
across time and space,
miles and phone lines.
All the hours you had spit flames upon my demons,
sent them cowering into the depths of the night,
all the while saving my soul from
the great unknown.
For if what they say is true,
and my body is temple,
then you have been inscribed on my soul,
like the Gods were inscribed on the walls
of the temples of Delhi.
It is here.
It is here.
"It is here."

I remember the last time,
I felt like I was flying.
Do you remember?
In that club on High Street,
with too many shadows,
and too little sincerity.
That time
that song came on,
the one that had suddenly convinced us
that everything could be beautiful
that for three minutes and thirty six seconds,
everything could really be this easy.
Life could be this simple.
We could own the night,
our destiny,
the rest of time and space as we knew it.
That song,
had somehow
negated the existence of anything
outside those florescent walls,
a world where we were merely human,
because to the sound of that bassline,
we had become gods.
Do you remember,
how I looked at you,
and smiled,
as you threw me onto your shoulders,
and I threw my hands into the air,
as the world turned faster and slower
all at once.
That night,
for that song,
in those three minutes and thirty six seconds,
if never again,
in that club on High Street,
I was flying.
And I was infinite.

Screaming rings out through the glass panes
of the house across the street.
And it sounds just like them.
The nights she spent screaming about
the mistresses
and the nightmare she felt was her life.
Before he would leave.
He always left.
Well, mostly.
Some nights she would come into our rooms,
****** us out of our tossings and turnings
and run.
But only one of us.
She only ever took one of us.
And we would drive the twenty minute ride
to Martha's house,
where I,
or he,
would pretend to sleep on the couch,
while she drank,
and commiserated,
about how he didn't try.
And he didn't care.
How the **** from the emails,
didn't care that she was destroying a family,
or a life.
Or whatever the ****,
she thought she was fighting for.
But mostly,
most nights,
it was him leaving.
It was the sound of the door slamming,
and the engine of his '93 Volvo starting up
in our dirt driveway
as he disappeared into the night.
And I never understood.
I never understood why he left,
every time.
That is,
until the day came,
when I, myself, started leaving.