In the windowpane of a well-lit city bus at night, this is where I want to be. New York City yelling yelling two days awake at 5am. Chaos.

People die and people die and things happen but we just want to dance dance dance. I dance on the graves of my forefathers, I dance on the graves of the lace-laden aunts. I dance dance dance.

He smells like the wrong thing, like 2002. Like a coffee shop conversation gone wrong, a first kiss never had. I smell my knees as I sit at my computer, I take half-**** photos of myself and send them to people I barely know. I flirt and I lie (awake on a Saturday morning). All of my sentences start in the possessive.

When she found out that her toes were different sizes she just near threw herself off the building. When the phone never picks up, the people up the list from her. She gets a wrong feeling about the place she's in. But she still asks for the space on the floor, still wants to be there. 5am and the traffic continues, cop cars disguised as taxis. We had to convince her to hold back-- no one wanted blood on their shoes.

When you get frowns and one word answers from your heroes, when you read too much into everything. When 5am rolls around. Maybe sometime, sooner or later . . . but I don't think I'm ready yet. I just don't want to, I'm not feeling up to it. The sun is rising too fast. The earth is spinning and I feel like I'm ten years old again. Holding hands in the grass and denying kisses, what has happened to me? I am not connected.

That summer that we wore no shoes? And we danced on the fourth of July? And we listened to your sister's records?

It's just one of those things.

It's good until it's bad and when it's bad it gets worse. I noticed the car, butterfly, car, butterfly, caught in the engine. Curling fumes and smoke and drip drip clip clop clipping of the pipe outside the window. It's all just sounds.

I transfer the days and the seasons, Winter as Summer and Summer as Fall. The seasons all come late, after all. And the days get shorter and the nights get longer and the air grows colder but our teeth get stronger. These are the months, this is the decade. This will be my year.

But as the seconds tick and the nines get closer, I wonder about the holes in the floor. Where will we go if it collapses? What does the center of the Earth hold for us? I don't buy all that heat. It's just friction, all the tension. The hand-wringing and the nerves. The butterflies. The awkward sidestep. The silence.

In my head, it all made sense. I would do what I wanted to do now, let the reflections continue digitally until the next time I had the opportunity. But my ego is large and I trip over it on the daily. And I confuse with my circles and expect and inspect and continue, move forward into a tangled mess of dubstep and electro and Tom Waits. Breath sweet like ecstasy and Ritalin framed by clouds and clouds of *** smoke. So uh, we need to get going now, right?

Carve me a square in that floor, carpet and curtain me up. Send me to the dance floor deep in the fog. Maybe that will quiet the butterflies.

Even in the patchy fog of six am this town smells like the inside of a paper bag. Western Oregon holds itself, quiet at night, focused in on the valley or out towards the dune-laden coast. The hills are small and yet somehow daunting in the dark, driving through the curves past all the tiny towns. But six am, Eugene, the bellowing homeless men and the city workers, the overly commercialized strips and the people that don't belong here, don't belong there, don't really belong at all. We push them all together here.

And inside it all feels the same. The cold fog lays in my head, pulling down my eyes. New York City, Chicago, Atlanta. Chilled and tired and begging for something to call home. Something clean, not like the subway cars or the street corners. They're calling me: So, how're things on the west coast? A long long strip of lonely. It feels cheap and old in retrospect, creepy like abandoned warehouses on the side of the . . . freeway. I don't know what they're expecting, but the dust blowing through sure looks hungry.

All the hard to reach places are painful and sour. All the corners are dark and starving.

The clouds were laying flat on the rooftops and the mountains, smelling toxic and too clean, roses and lemons. The tears streaming down my face dripped in time with the math metal kick drum and fast crashes. It wasn't snowing, it was just nuclear fallout laying, staining the mountain tops. We opened the drawers and water rushed out, flooding the office, the whole **** apartment. I waded through the waist deep, ink stained memories now rushing over my legs. Disappearing.

The next day was sunny, and we snuck on the roof to read the numbers on the tops of city buses. Together, wearing each other's clothes, oddly discontent with our divestments. We saw the rain steam off the sidewalks from our designated spaces, perched above the crowds of swagger, staggering college students below. The blue and gold was overwhelming - we hid under blankets, curled against each other, kickball and four square on our minds.

I've been screaming for hours, pulling the acrylic off of my shortened fingernails, coming up with plots, ways to shut you up. The graphs are old and borrowed and coffee-stained, like the textbooks pulled so lovingly from the bottoms of boxes in attics and basements. I will continue to wait until the times you decided on, I will continue to wait.

My yawns were wasted on you, the subtleties of conversation breaking your kneecaps and knocking you over. Yellows and greens, parodies and satire, video games, hours spent in ***** beds. The chaos of a youth untamed. The chaos of a youth forgotten.

My nostrils stay cold in the warm weather, cold in the rain, a forever remnant of the days of ******* and truck beds. I inhale and exhale the poison of cigarettes, but the shotgun electricity of the little white lines pierces the folds of memory. As much as I ache to forget, I can still feel the powder laying latent underneath my fingernails.

The days of wanting stress are replaced by wanting to alleviate it. I'd rather not sit and listen to your scratching your tense fingertip-tapping jitters. Silent leg shaking bouncing making my records skip. The dust-covered dumpster-dived needle has stress enough without your additions, subtractions, multiplications. You sneeze white and red, the signs of frustrated futures and presents. The record skips back to one, water stained, nothing changes.

I once played without direction and felt it cheap and unnecessary, like angels that breathe deeply underwater. Grasping for sympathy and votes of confidence. Forging intimate connections without it, needing wanting grabbing feebly into the air. Desperation never even gets a chance. We are strong as equals, love dissipating into the aether, waiting watching wandering wishing waking.

I tried to bend and not break, divide and not conquer. I tripped on the wire, skinned knees, forgetting. The clouds of gray hang low low in the air. I will hold strong to my promises, even in this time of turmoil and smashed faces. My foot will stay planted. I will move forward. I will keep on keep on keep on.

Even when they doubt me, I will keep on.

My secrets are all hidden underneath poached eggs and hollandaise sauce as the sun creeps up over the horizon after another sleepless night. The requisite, routine, clearly, clearly, that's reasonable. I was surprised by your cunning, clever nature. You are so much more than you seem.

I fell in love with the process, like the little black notes that make up a slow jam or the pores on your body all clogged and gasping for air. The little spaces in between the letters seem so functional, so right. I am grabbed at grabbed at too too much. Radios and drama, culminating in a slow and painful downward spiral that never seems to end.

The green bar at the top of the marquee distracted me and I walked into pole after pole. I have saved this afternoon for you, don't you know! I paused and rewound and found the perfect spot to stop and rescue you. The sea birds are a little faster than me. The mermaids will not sing for me. They see through my game.

And I can't recreate the sound of home, like I want to. And the bed is so empty without you next to me. And the drive is long and lonely and without destination.

in the early morning bends
i begin to wonder, about my friends.
the tall order serves as disconnect
the scrutiny overwhelms.
i tap my heels along the sidewalk
pondering the ups and downs of our sideways dance
in the freezing cold that bleeds nostrils dry.
as our days turn into nights
in a cycle true and clear as glass
will we hang on, hang on, hang on
and let the nasty weather pass?
the clouds are brewing inside me
a voice repeating "let it be."
the fight, as all my friends could see
would be the force that set me free.