He was lying on the futon, watching Battlestar Galactica. I was in my nightgown sitting in his windowsill, smoking a cigarette, bored, restless & lonely. I stared out the window, looked down at the ground.

“Do you think if I fell out of your window, I would die?” I asked him.

“I don’t know if you’d die, but you would get seriously hurt that’s for sure.” He mumbled.

I took a long drag from my cigarette and looked back out the window. The street was empty and dark. The only illumination came from a single streetlight about half a block from where I was sitting. I stared at that streetlight for a long time, feeling as alone as ever. After a minute or so, I began to feel his eyes penetrate my core. I looked at him. He was all limbs spread in every direction. The flame in his eyes told me more than I wanted to know.

“Do you ever feel like a moth?” I asked him.

“In what sense?”

“I dunno, like do you ever feel like you’re always attracted to something that is out to destroy you in the end? Like no matter where you end up, you find yourself hitting the same lightbulb over and over as if it could save you… When really it will be the death of you?”

He looked at me quizzically. Electricity filled in the gaps between us.

“Why are you thinking about that?”

He reminded me of myself - always answering a question with a question.

I looked back at the streetlight and I could see the silhouettes of insects all around it.

“Oh, I was just noticing the streetlight over there and all of the bugs surrounding it. Don’t you ever feel like that though?” I asked him again.

“Well when you put it that way, I’ve always felt like that, yeah.”

“I have a book of poems that my friend Emma gave to me a while back - there’s a poem in there that reminds me of feeling like that. It’s called ‘the lesson of the moth’. I’d like to read it to you sometime.”

I took a drag from my cigarette and looked at him again. Beautiful, he was in that moment. Just lying there listening to me, I felt like I was being heard for the first time. Battlestar Galactica had then become just a fuzz of white noise. I stared at him in silence.

“What are you staring at?” I smiled.

“You.”

“Why?”

“You’re beautiful.”

I looked back at the streetlight and exhaled a long puff of smoke.

Minutes rolled by. I couldn’t bear to look at him again. I have a hard time being seen.

“Looking at you is like listening to a symphony.” He said at last.

I was caught more by the charm of how he was more absorbed by the moment of me and not the boring television series that blurred in the background, never mind the romance of what had just escaped from his mouth.

Because I knew I wasn’t the first girl he’s looked at like that, and I wouldn’t be the last.

But dammnit, he sure knew how to make my skin melt and my heart burn.

I’ve become more aware lately

Of the preciousness

Of time

The way my little brother smiles when I walk in the door

The wasp that kept circling around my Grandma and I today,

When we were sitting outside eating lunch.

The way the streetlight looked through the trees

My silhouette on the pavement,

Reminding me

How much I’ve been wounded and yet

I’m still here.

The little girl that stood in the middle of a puddle,

Stomping and laughing

In her pink rainboots.

“Gotta have fun on a rainy day somehow!” Her mother said to me

As I stood there smiling,

Noticing the beauty

In the simplicity of that moment.

Time is precious and life

Is a gift

And it’s completely irrelevant

If anyone would disagree.

of minimum wage.

tastes like black liquorice

smells like skunk

and looks like blood

it wakes you up in the middle of the night screaming

“i miss you”

it tears apart your heart and leaves its carcass in the middle of an open field

for the wolves and vultures to fight over

it’s the kind of loss that tricks you into thinking

you haven’t lost the person yet,

because they are in fact, still here

in the flesh, in plain view

it makes your memory lazy when you think

“maybe this time will be different”

so you go back when they call

when they say jump and you say “how high?”

and they love you and call you baby

baby baby baby baby

then you taste the liquorice

and smell the skunk

and see the blood

and you know, it was all a lie because

that person you love so much, really

isn’t here at all

it’s the worst kind of loss there is

when the heart betrays the mind and convinces you

maybe this time, it will be different.

maybe maybe maybe maybe

but then there’s always the ***** the boyfriend the party

that was long there before you ever came along

and it will always be there

always in the background of this person’s mind when they come running back

claiming that they’re lonely

sometimes you wonder if it would be easier

if the person was actually dead

then you shrug because

you already know how that feels, but

maybe maybe maybe maybe it would feel

a lot better than this and so

you keep loving this person, because

love is what you know and you can’t stop but

even love doesn’t cure a loss,

especially a loss like this.

Everybody

Asks me what I’m doing and I shrug and

Give them a foggy answer that sounds like

A thunderstorm trying to be quiet and they smile like

They know what I mean

When they can’t possibly because

I don’t know what I mean and

Everybody

Turns to me and asks

“So I heard bits and peices of what happened, but can you tell me the story yourself?”

And so I give them my memorized brief synopsis of my series

Of personal tragedies and then end it with a shrug and a

“Oh well, you live, you learn” type statement

And they laugh and look away because

They know I’m just saying that to make myself feel better.

I find myself clinging to little vestiges of control by

Keeping up with what’s going on in other people’s lives because

Everyone has got their **** together and I guess

By surrounding myself with people who have their **** together

I’m testing the waters to see if I will become

A ****-together-kind-of-person which ends up being

An altogether futile endeavour.

All I can ever do, really, is be successful at admitting defeat

And somehow carry on

Despite how undeserving I feel of all

That is good around me.

I’m older now so I try to forget

But I get flashbacks

Of the every weekend endless parties

The music the drinking the smoke the laughter

The audible hell that was

The garage

The pretend family that was

Us

Me walking in to play you a song before bed

Which would turn into

You drunkenly doing your best at showing me how

To play Satie’s Première Gymnopédie


Which would end in me wondering how to say goodnight

While you would cry silently about nothing

On my shoulder.

I’m older now so you think I’d forget

But I remember

The first birthday you had after your brother died when

You downed a bottle or three in the span of an hour or two

I went upstairs to make sure you were okay

Only to find your friends had carried you from

The garage to your bed

Which made for the most perfect

Stumbling distance

Any drunk could ever imagine.

I’m older now so I pretend to forget

But the memories crumble with clarity at night

You, opening the bottle at five and passing out at one or two in the morning

Only coming in the house to **** and eat and banter

Oh, the endless banter

I had fun with messing with your mind and playing with your words

When you were gone

As you so often were, every night of my

Entire span of pretending to blossom. I never knew who you were going to be -

“Your dad is a drug addict you know. He’s not perfect either. What are you staring at?”

“Oh baby, you’re so brilliant. You know that?! You’re brilliant!”

“I miss him so much. I’m so so sad and lonely…”

“It’s not all about you, you know. Don’t let it go to your head.”

I learned how to be a numb construction worker,

Constantly working on the foundation of the walls

I was building to protect myself from you.

I’m older now so you’d think I’d forget,

You’d think the memories would fade with each passing year

You’d think the wounds would have healed by now,

You’d think I could call myself a strong young woman.

But I can’t, I’m tormented by remembering, I’m haunted still

I am a ghost

The voices yell at me, tell me to throw in the towel already,

Get rid of everything what a waste of space. They sound like you.

Sometimes I miss it, I miss the hell that was living with you.

I miss the consistency, the predictable time-frame in which I could depend

On you to be emotionally unavailable. When I close my eyes, I can still see

Your silhouette swaying in the hallway, your hand fumbling for the light switch

The demon that would come out of your mouth every time I said

I love you.

But I’m older now, I try to forget.

I half succeed in daylight

But the memories crumble with clarity at night

The memories crumble with clarity at night.

Don’t bother wondering

Why I left without saying goodbye

I learn from the best, I can’t help it I’m lost

Marvel at my vacancy

I can’t help it I can’t help you

Don’t bother asking

Why I came without saying hello

I learn from the past, I can’t help it I’m sad

Notice the overflow

Of all of these feelings that don’t know where to go

If I gave them all to you,

Would you wash and fold them and

Organize them please?

Tell me which ones to keep and which ones I don’t need?

I can’t help it I don’t know where I am

There were too many signs pointing me in the wrong direction

And not enough memories reminding me not to

Follow them

I’m a good song gone wrong and you

Are a television

Draining my potential