I'm not
looking for comfort
but it's also no
coincidence
that every time
someone dies I find
myself wrapped
in a new boy's arms.
Like
maybe
this one
can catch lightning
in a bottle or
make my pulse mimic
thunder
again.
Like
maybe
this time
his heat on my skin
will
sear the
vacancy inside me
shut.

So we know what the world gives us. And after treating your body as something only used to tell time, we find that what makes us human, usually makes us more.
So now, if at it's composition, something is as much of what it can possibly be, there is always a corner in the world that keeps it's opposite.
Even with you and me.
People talk of living as if we do not die every single day, in more ways than one. Some times, it is because of people, some times it is because the lacking of them.
We talk of living as if we do it so well, but we still have no idea why the heart begins to beat.
We learn the most at birth, and the rest of the time we are just practicing how to lose things.
How to be places without leaving them.
And when we become so much of ourselves that we see others as places, then we turn into nothing but tourists to every person we meet, taking home things that help us forget that despite where we are, there is only one place we are ever supposed to be.

the house next door makes me
sad.
both man and wife rise early and
go to work.
they arrive home in early evening.
they have a young boy and a girl.
by 9 p.m. all the lights in the house
are out.
the next morning both man and
wife rise early again and go to
work.
they return in early evening.
By 9 p.m. all the lights are
out.

the house next door makes me
sad.
the people are nice people, I
like them.

but I feel them drowning.
and I can't save them.

they are surviving.
they are not
homeless.

but the price is
terrible.

sometimes during the day
I will look at the house
and the house will look at
me
and the house will
weep, yes, it does, I
feel it.

don't feel sorry for me.
I am a competent,
satisfied human being.

be sorry for the others
who
fidget
complain

who
constantly
rearrange their
lives
like
furniture.

juggling mates
and
attitudes

their
confusion is
constant

and it will
touch
whoever they
deal with.

beware of them:
one of their
key words is
"love."

and beware those who
only take
instructions from their
God

for they have
failed completely to live their own
lives.

don't feel sorry for me
because I am alone

for even
at the most terrible
moments
humor
is my
companion.

I am a dog walking
backwards

I am a broken
banjo

I am a telephone wire
strung up in
Toledo, Ohio

I am a man
eating a meal
this night
in the month of
September.

put your sympathy
aside.
they say
water held up
Christ:
to come
through
you better be
nearly as
lucky.

"what are you holding on to?"

the question wasn't rhetorical but the earth stood still. the clocks stopped ticking and the distant hum of car engines was silenced. even the street lights with their comforting buzz, stopped abruptly to take a pause. the stars nearly fell out of the sky, and nothing twinkled and danced in your dilated pupils. the air was dead and the strands of hair the wind had taken hostage were offered respite as they fell like pins down my back. the world faded - not into black - into nothing, into complete and absolute emptiness. your cigarette smoke hung in the air and the filter never came nearer and nearer. my heart, by some miraculous count, stopped racing long enough to reduce the sound in my ears to complete and utter silence.

i tried to answer, but all that came out was "I think we should paint the apartment soon."

you stared, "we should paint the apartment?"

"yes, I think so, it's so awfully bland. it makes me feel cold."

"why does it make you feel cold?"

"because of the absence of colour."

"what do you make of the absence of warmth?" your eyes were saying less than your mouth, and my words kept getting stuck in my throat.

"I think it's somewhere, maybe beneath the floorboards. we should change the floor, put in carpet. carpet is comforting."

"is that what you think? we can repaint and re-floor and we will be warm."

"I should think so. maybe a new bedspread, what do you think? we could go shopping maybe. tomorrow? or the day after?" my voice trailed off when your gaze shifted from my face to the ground.

"you're not holding on to renovation prospects and you're not answering my question."

in this state of universal paralysis, i became the focal point of the entire universe, to everything but you. i took a breath, and held it in, i thought and thought and though carbon copied hallmark responses danced around my brain, i had no words. i had only this moment, of complete and utter stasis, of company among solitude, of enlightenment as my senses betrayed me and my emotions were given room to embrace this artificial reality.

"the colour of light"

i know this surprised you, and i know you don't know why, even to this day. so i continued.

"i'm holding on to the sound of silence, and the taste of reassurance despite. the cathartic feeling of abandoning the conscious mind and licking mercury from your eyelids. the putrefaction of tactile and the vicious assimilation of awareness. the relentless burning of the merriem-webster definition of what it means to feel, to be. i'm holding on to everything you've cultivated within my mind, every stream of consciousness you diverted and corrupted, every single thought you've planted and watered and allowed to spiral out of control. i'm holding on to the challenge. i'm holding on to knowing - and what i know, is nothing."

you blinked, one hundred and twenty three times exactly - before you spoke, "you're holding on to what you know."

it was less of a question than a statement but I answered nonetheless, my voice was meek, "yes"

"well then," you flicked your cigarette and exhaled a breath, "we should pick out paint colours tomorrow. what were you thinking? red?"

"red is alive."

"grey it is then."

"but grey is oh so dull," I said, devoid of emotion.

you looked up for the first time in a while, "yes, I know, i'm holding on to what I know."

i heard a car horn or two. the colours returned and the sky had in fact remained full of stardust. we walked, quite a distance, until our senses once again became the paragon of normalcy. we both knew the ambiguity of my answer, we both knew that it ran deeper than we wanted to face, and we both knew that despite the inundation of motion in the perceivable world, the earth had not yet, begun to spin again.