i don’t have something to remember you by.

i think these past few months
would have been easier if
i’d had a sweatshirt of yours
to curl up into, even after too many washes
had drowned your scent.

but i think you loved me
too much
to let me indulge myself
in your ghost.

i’m 6
you’re tall like a “big kid”
i’m small, i fit in your lap
you like pokémon cards
[and the spice girls, that’s our secret]
last week you tried to runaway
you didn’t know where to go, came home
you should have gone
under the table

i’m 13
i have the coolest brother because
you work at an amusement park and
this roller coaster is fast
[your friends say your girlfriend is, too]
you aren’t mikey anymore but
not michael II either because
you’re purging daddy out
so you go by mike

i’m 17
i’m watching your band
again and
your phone keeps ringing
[she’s calling about mike’s baby]
i think i’ll pick it up, mikey
tell her you still like the spice girls

i’m 22
cleveland state?
it’s part of her deal
you’re stuck in ohio
[just like daddy]
but you’re getting out of columbus:
i gave you bus fare
under the table

i know you said i shouldn’t wait for you
but like sandra d
when it comes to love,
i have nothing better to do
every other boy is
a dry saltine *******
so let me keep my broken mood ring, babe
i don’t care if it’s stuck on blue

maybe if he smelled like you
i wouldn't cry
when he ***** me.

That even though it is your words that you are penning - your own thoughts, that it’s a friend?

Some sort of company in the darkness, in the empty parts of your life?

That when loneliness drifts into every orifice; seeping into the crevices and crooks in your body, your words are your friends?

When I write, when I see the ink form variations and combinations of those 26 letters, those symbols, I feel as if the answers are staring back at me.

Perhaps not.

Perhaps this is what writers tell themselves to stop them from going off into the deep end; stop Loneliness from truly swallowing them whole.

What do I know.

I have fallen in love with the lilac trees
oh how i long to be the gentle wind
that blows slowly through their leaves

i could speak ceaselessly for a thousand years
and still not explain why
your magnificence brings me to tears

i looked upon your sunkissed face
and for a moment
the vicissitudes of the fates
seemed a little less vicious
the winds a little less harsh
and the world a little less cruel.

heaven is a real place,
and it is a few inches of skin
just below your nose.

i am a man of many words and metaphors
but none of them can accurately describe
the simple beauty of the fact
that you are mine
and i am yours.

i wish to give you the world two times over
and three more times just because.

i was so lost amongst the wilds
and yet you still found me.

the pair of hands i've never held
are the ones i am dying to hold.

i cry out the massed molecules of this  malevolent multiverse
for a cessation of this tortuous existence.

i never want to hurt anyone ever again.

i walk through the field of flowers and leave behind nothing but ashes and arsenic.

i am like a lonely hurricane inside a china shop
i destroy everything i touch
and only wish to be loved.

i have apologized
until sorry is no longer a word
simply a jumble of sounds spilling out of my mouth
with no meaning
and no purpose.

i could say it to you
in every language in this wide world
paenitet
désolé
triste
scusate
and none would be enough.