We spent our youths
sleeping in empty bathtups
because we like the way it
makes his memory echo
through the silence,
the way syllables got
trapped beneath the taps.
And we only paid
attention to abandoned buildings
when we became one.
But we never had someone
around to tell us that
the objects in the mirror
are less depressed than
they appear.
So we keep reciting bedtime
stories and dryheaving
scattered sensations because
saying his name feels
like chocking down bleach
but it hurts less than
knowing no amount of time
spent staring passed empty
doorways will bring him back.
No one told us that goodbyes
taste like the back of a
postage stamp and no one
told us that coming home
feels a lot like drowning.
Every year for Halloween
we dress up as the versions
of ourselves that were in love
with the way their skin
looked in the day time
and we sit
outside upon the porch
hoping we'll walk out and
leave our heartless archetypes
behind.
No one told us that loving
would be like playing
the piano for someone who
can't hear,
or that it would remind us
of the way we felt the first
time we dropped our ice
creams as a kid.
So we're trapped finding
colours in the shadows
on the ceiling and
we keep storing secrets
in our cigarettes.
Because we just can't seem to
find our place
in this world and
we swopped a one bedroom
apartment for a bloodless
bag of dark hair and
dislocated words.
We curled our spines
into shapes that resemble
hurricanes
because all we see
between our bones is
substance for natural disaster.
We lost hope the moment
she hurled from our van
and we've been searching
inside drug stores
ever since.
So excuse us,
for we smell of death
and cheap wine.
And our clothes are stained
from loss and citric acid,
but if you let us limp
our way passed,
you may learn the lesson
your mother never had
the nerve to teach you

1.) You had more spiders in your house than friends, and you liked it that way.
You said they taught you not to fear the dead, but rather the living.
Sometimes I wish you never embraced death so much.

2.) I've collected memories of you like fireflies in glass jars and I hid them beneath the floorboards because I'm scared the glass will break
and I'll have to watch you fly away again.

3.) You were six foot and three inches of religious metaphors deeply rooted in your veins
and I think that's why you injected so much sin.

4.) I wish I could show you that the world is twice as big as we had thought
but there's still a lack of soil fertile enough for bodies like ours to grow.
I would have cut holes in the ozone if it meant I could give you the rain.

5.) It would have been your twenty third birthday on Monday and I just hope I finally get the courage to visit your grave.

6.) I don't believe much in the idea of god, but I believe firmly in your ghost.
I don't believe in hell, I think the concept is too fragile and the principal too impressionable.
But for your sake, I sure do hope there's a heaven.

7.) Sometimes I wake up at midnight and call your old number just praying that it was all a dream. But the only dream is the one where you tell me it wasn't my fault and the awakening is knowing that it was.

8.) I still don't have it in me to say your name out loud.

9.) I don't think I've been happy since 2011 and I miss you every day,
but I miss you most in the month of September because that's when it all just slipped away.