my memory isn’t the greatest, and i’ve lived in 5 different houses in the past 2 years out of mostly fear and “last resort.”

things are mostly black from being shoved into the corners and red from blaming it all on my carelessness and blue from him demanding he fix me with knuckles.

i don’t remember much of anything, but i could hear the trains call from each of those 5 houses and they called and called and called until i stopped believing in building up lives around comfort instead of satisfaction.

I should have made you pay rent for the space I loaned you out in my heart.
"Please leave, you've overstayed your welcome and I haven't had a payment in months,
I let it go because you keep the room clean and the corners warm, but I heard you talking
again last night, knocking on another tenants building,
asking if there was an available room."
Tonight I'll clean up all your messes.
You were the customer who took too much.

You told me it was better this way,
I kept you up at night and
made you worry
and sometimes you thought too hard
about what other people
would say about me

You once held me really close
in a cheap hotel room
and told me this was closer than
anyone had ever been to you

and you liked it this way

I still remember that night I
sat in your lap and leaned my head on your shoulder
and we smoked cigarette after cigarette
as the stars moved above us,
you said "there's never been one quite like you."

The day we wasted in your bed,
kissing and whispering and touching nothing but fingertips,
I learned more about how to make you laugh
rather than how to make you moan.

At the bonfire our friends had,
it was so cold that we found our way to each other's arms.
Our friends were so shocked
that they barely spoke a word to us
but I'm sure they saw how happy we were,
I'm sure of it.

And you took me to the airport
on the freezing morning in March.
You kissed me on the cheek
and held my hands in yours
so hard that I could feel the joints in my fingers creak.

I believed you.
How could I have ******* believed in you.

I wonder where
all the inspiration
and dreams
and hopes
I have at 2 in the morning
go when I am watching the clock strike noon
because I
sure as hell am '
not as inspired
by the harsh rays of the world
in the afternoon
like I am by the kiss
of the moon in the cool
early morning

I always tell myself
"I'm going to bed early tonight"
but then I'm sitting at 5 in the morning
singing
Modest Mouse songs to the empty house
and getting on my shoes to
smoke the first cigarette of the day
in the new days light.

If this is living,
I'm still not sure how I feel about it
but I'm smiling.

I'm really not okay with the way you look at me these days,
in fact
the absence of your look is more the right words

I used to be so much more eloquent and the words
would slip off my tongue and
through to your ears like molasses

You would crane your neck
to hear me whisper
nonsense

I'm sorry I was never serious
I'm sorry I was never quick enough

You're sorry you wasted your time

i could've sworn i
outgrew what you taught me
but maybe it's true
maybe i'm cursed to be a copy