I wake up from dreams
With goose bumps where your hands used to go
My dreams remind me what you looked like
My body reminds me what you felt like
My empty bed reminds me what you feel like
Your phone number reminds me you're not just a phone call away anymore
And my friends try their damnedest to remind me 'This too shall pass'
This too shall pass
But my heart is just starting to break
The dog days are not done
The pain is just beginning
And my heart will have to break up all the way
Before I can start to fix it again
I don't have much super glue
This will be quite the patchwork job
I get goose bumps on my finger tips
I get goose bumps on my chest
I get goose bumps on my thighs
I get goose bumps on my arms
And all I can hope is that every now and then you wake up with goose bumps too
This too shall pass
I don't want this to pass
I just want to be in the past I'm living in, in my dreams
Where you still sing to me the lullabies I sing to my son to help me sleep
And you wake me with gentle kisses to the forhead
And rubbing my hands with your fingers
My bed used to be such a perfect fit for me and you lying in this huddled cold mess of sheets
I can hardly find it in myself to take up more space then my pillows
You always took up more space then I did
And since you replaced yourself with the pillows
Nostalgia won't let me stretch my legs
I want to stretch my legs
I want to run away from this
But I can't run from pain
Can't run from goose bumps
I can't run from dreams
I will eventually have to close my eyes
And when I do
I will see yours open
Looking into mine
Saying I love you
Like you mean it
Like you always did
But didn't always mean it
Or at least you don't still mean it
I'm too young to be burdened forever by something I didn't choose
Like not having you in my life
You owe me too much still
Like a song on the piano
Like salsa lessons
Like a night out
Lilke teaching me how to fish and ride 4 wheelers
Like midnight phone calls
Like more good mornings
And less goodbyes
Like tomorrow
Like forever

It's a bad day when you can't get Celene Dion out of your head
Titanic was good
It was not that good

I found a dried flower
Buried in Leviticus of my sort of grandma's bible
She must have liked that part
The only quote about Leviticus I've read on the internet is about stoning gay people
I hope she didn't like it that much

I saw a bagel get made
No one has the job of eating the middles out
I'm 23, this was a let down
I still like bagels a lot

I tacked the dry flower on my wall
Above the reminder that it's $3 a day to swim at the public pool in the mornings
I hope it's not a homophobic flower
I hid the bible behind Lauren Conrad's book
Lauren Conrad's book embarrasses me less

My sort of grandma
Is only sort of alive
I often feel that way

I feel most alive while dreaming of the impossible
Realistic dreams lead to disappointment
Outlandish dreams leave little 'remember when’s’'
No one hates themselves for not becoming an astronaut
A lot of people hate themselves for not losing 20lbs

Friendships are often measured in favors
That is all
That was not all
Favors are measured in sacrifices
Favors are not measured in reward

Today is a reflection of not dying yesterday
There is a one in seven chance that today is Friday
And it is imperative that we get down on Friday
Because the anticipation for this weekend is very high
If today is Monday all of that is no longer relevant to our conversation

I am losing weight
As I lose weight more and more fat girls hit on me
I do not like this as much as what I was imagining would happen

I have learned that being funny **** cool
Like I am becoming
Does not mean hot girls will hit on me
It means they will actually think about it before saying no

To supplement my soon to be chiseled physic
I am learning a Jack Johnson song on guitar
This worked for an acquaintance in 2006
Maybe I should learn Colbie Callait instead

The world would be better if schools had better teachers
The world would also be better if high school seniors paid attention to the teachers they already have
I don't know which one is easier to fix

My past seems rosier than my future
Except in the case of February 16th 2007
And now February 16th 2012

Corner buildings and modern light fixtures are my favorite aesthetics
My favorite building has neither of those features
Those features are not that awesome

Dead flowers smell like dead things
To combat this I spray cologne on my grandma's flower
I have never been to a funeral
I wonder if they febreeze the dead people
Or maybe they use Chanel No. 5
This is something I would like to learn more about

Two years ago for lent
I gave up lying
It lasted
Two weeks
So in the spirit of honesty
I wanted to set the record straight
This might just be for my benefit and you might not get anything out of it but
I’m a liar
Always have been
And I’d like to shed some weight
So here goes

The first girl I ever kissed was Ashlynn (I forget her last name)
There was tongue
I was 13
It was truth or dare
I know
It doesn’t count
I kissed ten more girls playing truth or dare between Ashlynn Iforget and my first real kiss
My first real honest to goodness no truth or dare kiss
Was the day after junior prom
We woke up in each other’s arms on the couch
Stared at each other for hours until she finally kissed me
We kissed for six hours
My lips chapped
That lasted a year and a half
She had my baby

When I was in fifth grade my neighbor and I broke my parents antique glass table
I told everyone I just sat on it
I really body slammed my friend on it

To everyone I’ve told I don’t like dogs
I kind of like them
I don’t want one
But I kind of like them

When I spent the first year of my son’s life 350 miles away at a better job
Building a better future
I was really running away
Though to be fair
I didn’t know I was lying ‘til I came home

To Emily (I forgot her last name) from Corvallis
I am not a bio-chem major with a minor in French
Though I do dream of owning a vineyard in the south of Spain

Also to Emily Iforget
I was not just staying in my friend’s storage closet…that was my room

To sergeant Roscoe
My wife was not pregnant

I don’t put dates on anything I write
Because I secretly hope when I die
Someone will take the time to read it all and try to organize it
So they’ll have to think about me longer

To all of my female friends
I am a very good listener
I am a great shopping buddy
But I have had a crush on each of you at some point
Some of you knew that already

My *** number is higher than I tell people
I really want to try out for American Idol
I kissed a boy
And I liked it

To every homeless man ever
I do have spare change

To you-should-know-who-you-are-if-you-hear-this
Yes those were my underwear
And yes I did have *** with your sister

Mom I took a twenty from your purse when I was 16
Dad I stole $100 bucks once

I only cried four times during The Notebook not six

And I wouldn’t break up with you if you cheated on me
Because without my lies I have the self esteem of an Olsen Twin alone at a stranger’s house party

The only kegger I ever went to was my mom’s 50th birthday party.

I have lied a lot
Often without realizing it
Sometimes it’s on purpose

Some of them don’t make sense
Like lying about wanting to go bungee jumping…I don’t…I once said I did

Some are for your benefit
I did not want seconds of the first dinner you ever made me that **** was gross

Some are for my benefit
I really didn’t love you

Some I will never get
I am too afraid to call my best friend because I know he’ll forgive me
And I don’t think I deserve it

But that last thing I’d like to be honest about
I hope one day I love myself enough
To stop saying
I’m 6’2”

I’ve scraped the bottom of a fish tank
I never owned one of those sucker fish
Saturdays that’s when I would clean the tank
I never liked it
When you scrape the tank all that green stuff floats around a gets stuck on your hand
I didn’t like that
I don’t like having ***** hands
It tells people where I’ve been
I don’t want people knowing where I’ve been
I don’t like to have been where I’ve been
I’d prefer I never was
I tend to tell people I never was
You can’t do that when you have dirt on your hands
I wash my hands
The sink knows where I’ve been
I forget a lot of things my sink knows
My sink knows a lot of things
When I was my hands
I use soap just to make sure
I don’t online date
I don’t need to
I have a girlfriend
She doesn’t wash her hands
I know where she’s been
I can see how many times she scraped the tank
She hasn’t scraped the tank too much
Not as much as I have
More than she knows I have
But less than my sink knows
If she ever knew she wouldn’t stay
I buy new shoes a lot
No dirt
I don’t like the dirt
The dirt gives me away
I hide from my dirt
Dirt is hard to hide from
It floats
It floats in the air I stir up when I run away from it
My girlfriend doesn’t look behind me
She will one day
I can’t stop it
She’ll leave me
I’ll wash my hands
I’ll forget
My sink won’t forget
She will not wash her hands
She won’t forget
I got rid of my fish tank
I won’t scrape it anymore
I never like doing that
Too much dirt
I’ll just **** the garden
My sink will know
She will not
Tomorrow will come before I am ready
It always does
Why wouldn’t it
It doesn’t know me
Doesn’t sympathize for my problems
Today’s dirt will still be there tomorrow
Tomorrow’s dirt is not here yet
I can’t wash the dirt before my hands touch it
My sink won’t let me
She asked my sink
It told her
She’s gone now
She has clean hands
She has clean shoes
She has clean knees
I have soapy hands
I have new shoes
The stains on my knees won’t come out
So I wear pants
I stopped weeding my garden
It’s too *****
I had potatoes
They were too *****
I asked tomorrow what its dirt will be
It won’t tell me
I can’t wash out dirt I don’t have on my hands yet
My sink won’t forget
I learn my lessons from my mistakes
I have not learned all of my lessons
I have not made all my mistakes.

I've been shot through the heart
By a bullet with no name
So I have no one left to blame for this
I'm lying here
Bleeding out
Asking forgiveness from everyone I've met
But they all deleted my number along time ago
Nobody answers numbers they don't recognize anymore
So really I'm just lying here
Staring at the moon doing its best impersonation of the Cheshire Cat
And I want that
That, smile while I die
The "it ain't ****"
That swagger that everyone else seems to have
I never had

I'm lying in a casket I built
The only project I ever finished
They're shoveling piles of regrets, sorrys, and unused potential
That's enough to bury me here
My headstone doesn't read like the eulogy of a loved man
It reads like a children's book
One word per page
And the word they put on the only page about me?
Somebody else's name
So the creditors couldn't find me
It's not like anyone else calls these days
History need not remember those who did not contribute to it

The list of things I've said I would do
Is not as long as the list of things Kanye West has done
But if you let me finish you'll see it's ten times as long as the list of things I've done

I know five songs by heart
Every one of them is sad
Ain't No Sunshine
500 Miles (not the catchy one the old a capella one from the fifties)
Hallelujah
Landslide
And Red Eye
I use the word why like a piece of gum
Chewing on it until it loses its flavor
It used to taste like coconut
After 10 hours of a graveyard shift it just tastes like yesterday
And the moon doesn't track my days anymore
My feelings do and it's been today for a long time and yesterday I was happy
It's been a few years since yesterday
I can't wait till tomorrow
Who knows maybe it will come when I wake up

I have black out curtains
The sun says goodnight to my toes through the crack in them
My dreams still watch her pull the trigger
I still wake up with bullet holes
People are still not answering my phone calls
And I'm too afraid of my mirror to go knock on their doors and ask if they want to come out and play
She knew
I knew
But knowing isn't accepting and accepting isn't wanting
I want my dreams back

My feet swell up at the end of a work day
When I take my shoes off they feel better
I don't feel better now that she's gone
My heart used to swell up after seeing her
Apparently swelling doesn't always hurt
Apparently making it stop doesn't always feel better
I learn something new every day
Today I learned that if you only think happy thoughts about a person you just miss them more
Yesterday I learned if you only think bad thoughts about a person you just want to apologize
Tomorrow I'll learn what happens if you forgot that person ever left
She won't be learning the same lesson
I don't see this going too well
My therapist says it doesn't have to be fair to be how I feel
I feel discarded
Like one of my promises
Like one of her days
Like a snow man in March
The piece of litter the prisoners forgot in the blackberry bush on the side of 1-5

The moon smiles like a cat who never knew what it was to frown
I live like a man who never knew what it was to be

Silence is the seconds after she sets her phone down and before he texts her back
She keeps it on vibrate so it doesn't wake me
That's pretty polite of her
I think it's cute she thinks I could fall asleep

My teeth tingle the good *** tingle when my head board shivers
Maybe memories
Maybe foreshadowing

She has different sighs
Ones for when she's sad, angry, overwhelmed
His texts and our hugs have the same sigh
That's how I know she still loves me

She says his name in bed
We both pretend it didn't happen
It's better that way
I keep her warm for him
She keeps me...
She keeps me

I don't go through her phone and read her text messages
She deletes them
That's polite of her
I don't ask about him
It's only polite of me
There's nothing more to be said
I get the good *** tingle when her phone vibrates
Not when it beeps though
Because if it beeps it's just her sister
And I don't want *** with her sister

She tells me I know things about her no one else knows
It's cute she thinks no one else knows

Can you count?
I can count
1 text 2 text 3 text
It's just like sheep
If the sheep were stealing your ****

She's not my ****
Just wanted to make that clear
She's his ****
I just stay here

I like it when she pretends he doesn't exist
It's polite of her
He exists
They say goodnight around three
When she turns her phone volume back up
I whisper good night
She pretends I don't whisper
I just hope if I have the last word she'll dream about me too

On occasion he turns her on
That's when we have the best ***
She keeps her eyes closed so she can see him
I close my eyes too
I like to imagine her eyes are open

Sometimes they fight
About me
We don't fight about him
She appreciates that I can hear it in her sighs

Sometimes his texts get frustrated sighs
Sometimes I get those too
Usually when I try and rest my hand on hers during silence
She doesn't like that
She likes him

Take me home sweet senorita
Ride me on your wings
Flap your arms
Cause hurricanes
And watch them like Van Gogh would
With stars in our ears
Then send me down little ******
Along the Yangtze River banks
To flood my paddies and scythe my stalks
And feed the family waiting

Take me home weeping widow
Let me ride in the hole in your heart
Where the walls are decorated in photographs you were never in
Drop me in the heart of industry
Let me build to make my way
To build the home to which I walk
To build the table on which I will feed my family the spoils of a day in field

Take me home
Mother
Slide me between your arms
Show me where to go
Bring to me my family
Fed upon my table
In my house
With the harvest of my hands
Be the mother of my family
Make where you are, my home